OneTaste is a San Francisco for-profit corporation founded in 2004 that teaches classes on sexuality and female empowerment. The company is best known for its controversial Orgasmic Meditation, a partnered practice that typically involves a man stroking a woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes.
The Seal of the DOJ for the Eastern District of NY – the prosecutors in a uniquely flimsy case.
In 2023, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York charged the co-founder of the company, Nicole Daedone, and the former director of sales, Rachel Cherwitz, with a single count of conspiring to commit forced labor but did not charge them with forced labor.
It’s the first time the federal government has charged anybody with forced labor conspiracy without charging a “substantive” crime – the actual criminal act, as opposed to merely planning the crime.
Defendants Rachel Cherwitz and Nicole Daedone stand charged with forced labor conspiracy. The US Attorney does not allege they committed forced labor.
Just Women
Conspiracy: Four birds were sitting on posts and two of the birds conspired to force the others to fly away. But none of the birds flew away. What is the crime? Conspiracy to force flight.
Maybe because they’re women and not as good as men, the prosecution believes the two women conspired for 12 years to commit forced labor and were unsuccessful.
The indictment does not explain how they tried to force people to labor. Or what the forced labor the laborers would have been forced to labor at had the women succeeded in forcing anyone to labor. The prosecutors merely allege the two women conspired without naming any specific acts. Or any person.
The prosecutors generalize that Daedone and Cherwitz manipulated, pressured, surveilled, seduced, tricked, psyched out, persuaded, bluffed, and intimidated in their conspiracy to force people to do labor. But after 12 years, they did not force anyone to labor.
In the indictment, the prosecutors don’t name anybody who did a lick of work, not even get a cup of coffee for anybody. To say it again, the prosecutors did not (and they would have if they could) charge the defendants with forced labor.
As the US Attorney for the EDNY wrote in opposition to the defendants’ motion for a bill of particulars, “The instant case charges a conspiracy and not a substantive offense. The defendants could be proven guilty if they never forced any victim to do anything—so long as the evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that they agreed to do so.”
It means there need not be a victim to put these women in prison for 20 years. Prosecutors are trying to break new ground.
Typically, a jury would expect a victim or victims and actual crimes. This is a brand new kind of prosecution
Attempted Bank Robbery
You might compare it to being charged with attempted bank robbery.
You and I, “we,” the prosecutors allege – conspired for 12 years to rob a bank. Twelve years pass. Then, one day, we visited the bank. We did not rob the bank. We went to cash a check. That’s enough to be charged with conspiracy to commit bank robbery. The prosecutors could allege we were surveilling the bank. That could be an overt act.
John Dillinger conspired with his gang to rob banks. Then they actually robbed them.
Victimless Crimes Are Good Enough in Brooklyn
Prosecutors allege two birds conspired (for 12 years) to force other birds to bring them worms. Yet none of the birds ever brought them any worms. Instead, the birds ate the worms wherever they found them. With what crime could the two birds be charged? Conspiracy to commit forced worming.
A Feeble Indictment
In the indictment against Daedone and Cherwitz, the prosecutors failed to state an overt act to put their supposed forced labor conspiracy into action. After 12 years, one would think they might have done something.
Sympathy for Prosecutors
People feel sorry for innocent defendants who might spend years in prison on bogus charges.
But who feels sorry for the EDNY prosecutors and FBI agents who in this case spent years on the investigation and prosecution only to find they had a case so flimsy that it bears ridicule?
A twelve-year forced labor conspiracy without any forced labor!
Based on the dishonest testimony of a couple liars, they thought they had sex trafficking. They thought they had forced labor. What’s a prosecutor at the Department of Justice to do when the evidence does not pan out?
Indict and take a job in the private sector?
If the prosecutors had not indicted Daedone on something, they would have looked ridiculous for spending all that time on a case that produced nothing.
And the Eastern District prosecutors can’t afford to be made to look ridiculous. So they indicted on the forced labor conspiracy charge alone and hoped for a plea deal or an imbecile jury.
If they get a plea deal, they claim victory. If they win at trial, the buttons on their blouses will pop right off from pride.
Should the defendants be acquitted, the prosecutors will claim the jury was fooled.
But who feels sorry for the modern American federal prosecutors?
Driven by ambition, with winning measured by conviction stats, motivated by adversarial spirit, buoyed into arrogance and breach of humanity by the unequal playing field that is federal trial practice today, they forge ahead and convict the innocent.
Consider the heavy, deadening weight of karma such foulness bears. Consider its cumulative effect. They can’t slough it off on the argument that the jury knows best when they win, and the jury was fooled when they lose. It doesn’t work like that.
An imbecile jury would be helpful for the prosecution in the case against Daedone and Cherwitz.
Debate, Anyone?
I am happy to debate anyone in a public forum on the question of whether this is a misguided, false and bogus prosecution, and the prosecutors today are not as concerned with justice as with conviction stats. Debate of importance legal issues have been conducive to public awareness in the past.
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Please apply to frankparlato@gmail.com if you would care to take me up on this offer.
