His name was Sean Fern, an Assistant US Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, and he was making legal history in the Brooklyn federal courthouse.
He was making his opening statement in the case of the USA v Rachel Cherwitz and Nicole Daedone — on trial for a single count of forced labor conspiracy. The date was May 6, 2025.
Prosecutor Seeks to Redefine Consent in Orgasmic Meditation Trial
The courtroom was filled with the echo of trauma, as Fern told a tale of villainy where the victims are grown women with credit cards.
Fern wants to expand the legal concept of “serious harm,” the essential element of forced labor.
Fern wasn’t talking about violence. The defendants didn’t beat anyone. The women weren’t chained.
They were broken girls looking for peace. Instead, he said they got gaslit and made to serve. They were mind-melded, tracked like deer, gaslit, and left as shells of their former selves.
Fern alleged that the defendants’ company, OneTaste, institutionalized sexual servitude—the company’s flagship practice. Orgasmic Meditation – fifteen minutes of genital rubbing – was an act of labor.
The women weren’t trafficked in the legal sense. They weren’t caged. They paid to be there. Fern argued that adult women lost their agency. They were hypnotized with orgasm. They got horny and hopeful and ended up in hell.
Fern, seeking to change the law in America, wants a Brooklyn jury to set a precedent – to give the government the authority to invalidate consent retroactively.
And he wants the two women who made a handful of adult women regret their consent to go to prison.
Prosecutor Fern Speaks
(You can read prosecutor Sean Fern’s remarkable complete opening statement here.)
Fern spoke:
For over a decade, the defendants, Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz, worked together to coerce vulnerable women to perform labor, including sexual labor for their benefit. These women typically came from traumatic backgrounds, and they were looking to improve their lives…
OneTaste claimed to promote female empowerment…. After gaining their victim’s trust, the defendants set out on a criminal scheme to control these women.
The defendants drove their victims into debt. The defendants isolated their victims from the world outside of OneTaste and interfered with their family and romantic relationships.
The defendants tracked their victims’ innermost fears. The defendants used psychological tactics to control their victims. They gaslit them and deprived them of sleep and privacy.
They subjected them to sexual abuse.
The defendants did those things… to coerce their victims to perform unpaid or underpaid labor for OneTaste.
Working long hours, performing meaningless tasks, sexually servicing OneTaste clients… These victims came to OneTaste seeking personal growth. They left as shells of their former selves….
OneTaste was selling hands-on courses involving what Daedone called orgasmic Meditation, or OM. OM involved rubbing a woman’s naked genitals for 15 minutes….
At its beginning, OneTaste relied on funding from a wealthy tech investor. Daedone and others recruited multiple women to sexually service him to keep him happy so he would fund and continue funding OneTaste. After they used up his money, the defendants switched to targeting anyone whose money they could get, charging them tens of thousands of dollars for what the defendants claimed to be advanced programs, exclusive memberships, and so-called personalized coaching sessions. That labor also included selling courses, transcribing notes, cleaning, cooking, setting up events, and attending to … Daedone’s every whim….
Nicole Daedone
Throughout this trial, you’ll hear from a series of women who turned to OneTaste for healing but left … as remnants, broken remnants …
Dana will tell you how she came to rely on OneTaste for her housing and basic needs. She will tell you how she was psychologically manipulated by the defendants. How she was coerced into debt by their claims that the path to personal growth ran through more and more expensive courses.
Dana Gill told prosecutors she was powerless, a puppet, a woman-child without a will.
To payoff that debt, the defendants ordered Dana to work. That work involved rubbing perspective client’s penises until they climaxed.
And serving OneTaste’s primary investor by taking care of his garden, making him breakfast, and performing sex acts on him….
Michelle will tell you how she came to live in a OneTaste residence. To pay her for rent and OneTaste courses, the defendants ordered Michelle to … work in the kitchen, and sexually servicing that same wealthy OneTaste investor….
Woman-child, Michelle Wright lost her ability to consent once she associated with adult men and women.
Becky worked off substantial debt brought on by OneTaste by becoming a member of the OneTaste sales team where she was directed to let prospective clients rub her naked genitals…
Woman-child Becky Uma Halpern was brainwashed and did not have the requisite compos mentis to consent.
You’ll also hear from … other women. Some of these women worked seven days a week from early in the morning until late at night. They slept in shared beds. They were expected to work through illness and to answer calls and text messages immediately….
They all provided a variety of sexual services to support OneTaste. For this work, they were paid very little or nothing at all…
They worked because they were taught that the way to enlightenment was to obey the defendants’ demands. They worked because they were isolated from their friends, their families, and the world outside the OneTaste.
They worked because they were taught there was no such thing as being a victim, and that doing the things they found sexually disgusting was the path to freedom. They worked because if they refused, they were shunned, called viruses or addicts and sent to addiction meetings designed to cause them to mistrust their own intuition.
But they also worked because they were scared. They were afraid that if they said no, they would be exiled from their homes and the only community they had. They were afraid if they said no, they would be spiritually ruined.
They were afraid that if they said no, they would be verbally abused and humiliated. And they were afraid if they said no, they would be financially devastated…
Dana, Michelle, Becky, and others will tell you how the defendants’ tactics broke them down financially, physically, and psychologically until OneTaste was the only thing the victims had…
As these victims lived in shared beds and crowded spaces working long hours, Daedone used OneTaste’s funds to enjoy a lavish lifestyle.
At the conclusion of this case … we will ask you to return the only verdict consistent with the evidence …guilty. Thank you.
Analysis of the Prosecutor’s Opening Statement
So, what do we have? A woman built a business out of orgasms. The customers were adults. In a country that advertises sex on every billboard, Daedone sold it naked—fifteen minutes at a time.
The buyers were adult men and women looking for a better way to feel, to be close. Nicole told them it was through touch. They came to be touched and were touched.
Thirty-two thousand took a class. Sixteen thousand paid for classes. More than a thousand coached and sold it. Fern didn’t say thirty-two thousand never complained.
Fern names three women – Dana, Michelle, and Becky and alludes to others – and recites a catalog of damage: debt, sleep deprivation, and sexual labor.
“They left as shells.”
He does not ask why thousands like them did not collapse.
Prosecutor Argues Belief Itself Was Coercion
Fern laid it out like a grifter’s script: a cult with pretty girls and richer men. Living in crowded houses.
Fern told tales of penis-rubbing and omelet service like he was describing a hostage crisis at a spa.
Dana strokes some guys and makes a frittata. Her choice to stay is evidence of domination. Michelle cleans up after a dinner party and gives the investor a wink. Her rent is exploitation.
“Doing things they found sexually disgusting was the path to freedom,” Fern said as he explained the philosophy on trial. His statement captures the totalitarian judiciary: that belief, when divergent, is dangerous.
These women, stripped of autonomy, are victims because they believed in a philosophy. They didn’t get dragged in off the street—they signed up. They smiled. They wrote blogs. They didn’t scream. They stayed.
Becky came looking for empowerment. Fern tells us she found humiliation. He says she let strangers touch her—not because she wanted to—but because she was told it would make her whole.
She worked through pain. Through silence. She believed in something and feared exile. She feared being alone. She feared losing the only place that told her she mattered. To Fern, Becky wasn’t just wrong; she didn’t just make a mistake. She was brainwashed.
Prosecutor Asks Jury to Reimagine Consent as Coercion
Becky, Dana, and Michelle went to an orgasm temple, lived in that community, rubbed strangers, maxed out their credit card, and Fern says they were forced.
Fern wants the power to say that a woman’s “yes” means nothing. That a whisper in the past could be tried like a scream.
He was asking for the power to call regret a crime. He wants to rewrite consent. Not just for sex. Not just for labor. But for belief, for trust, for community.
He wants the government to decide what people meant when they gave themselves—emotionally, spiritually, sexually. And to determine if they didn’t mean it.
With every syllable, Fern invites us into a world where belief is betrayal, touch is trafficking, women are unreliable, and their will unknowable—a law where consent exists only in the government’s present.
Sean Fern, an assistant US attorney, is not prosecuting crime. He’s prosecuting regret.
He wants a world where one may be convicted not for what one did—but for what one once believed.
You’re not just watching a trial. You’re watching Fern v. Consent—now in Brooklyn but coming soon to a courthouse near you.
