Becky Uma Halpern was a grown woman, not a prisoner of war. The jury heard her talk about how she met her husband and found meaning in life because of the people on trial. She took every OneTaste course because it helped her. She loved the community, the practice.
Becky Uma Halpern said she was happy. Happy in the way people rarely are when they speak under oath.
She testified, “I was so happy. Like, I loved it there. I loved my friends. I loved — I loved Rachel. I loved Nicole. And so the happiness was real. And all those videos, like, that’s what’s making me emotional looking at it. It was nice. Like, I had a great time.”
Imagine a courtroom where love and abuse are recited in the same breath, where happiness is remembered—and prosecuted.
The government insists she is a victim. But Becky Uma Halpern was not caged. She did not scream, “let me out.“ She was an adult.
Love Was a Symptom of Brainwashing
In the redirect examination, government witness Rebecca Uma Halpern appeared visibly shaken as she recounted her experience with OneTaste.
She sat there, crying, and when it came time to explain how she could be happy in a place she now said hurt her, she said she was brainwashed.
She testified: “So the happiness is part of the brainwashing. Right? Like, it’s — that’s — because people don’t stay in places where they’re not happy.”
She was smiling, thriving, orgasming her way through life—but now, years later, it was trauma in disguise. To love and to be destroyed—simultaneously.
She loved them. She hated them. She said they were good to her. She said they broke her. There are moments when language fails.
When a witness, overwhelmed by the need to justify her contradiction, reaches for a word that says everything and nothing.
“Brainwashed,“ she said.
Defense Presses Halpern: “Do You Even Know What Brainwashing Means?”
Defense counsel Celia Cohen pointed out that in Halpren’s 11 interviews with the government between 2018 and 2024, she never said she was brainwashed.
Somewhere in the last five or six months, she picked up this word to explain how she could be happy and still have everything be OneTaste’s fault.
During defense attorney Jennifer Bonjean’s recross, she asked Halpern for a definition of brainwashed.
Q Can you provide me with an accepted definition for the word “brainwashing”?
A I can provide you with my own definition.
Q I’m not interested in your own. I’m interested in an accepted definition of the word brainwashing.“ Do you have one to provide?
A I’m not claiming to be an expert.
Q Okay. So this is just you using it …to make a point, right?
A I’m saying that’s my understanding and that’s my experience.
Q Right. But again, just based on your own definition that none of us know what that is, right?
A I think it’s a common word that people understand.
Q Is it? … – then …What is the definition of brainwashing?
A And I’ll say again: I’m not claiming to be an expert.
Q So you don’t have a definition for the word “brainwashing,“ right?
A Do you want my definition?
Q I want to know if you have an accepted, widely-accepted definition for the word brainwashing“ to provide us.
A We’re just repeating the same.
Q So that’s a no?
A No to what question?
Q Whether you can provide us with an accepted definition of the word “brainwashing,“ meaning accepted amongst the public and all of us here in this room, other than your personal definition.
A No. What I can provide is my own personal definition, yes.
Witness Says No Regrets, Then Cries
During final recross-examination, Halpern told the jury she did not regret an orgasm-based meditation practice she did for three and a half years. She said she practiced OM hundreds of times, enjoyed most of them, and doesn’t regret her experience.
She loved the defendants. She said it again and again. Then she said she was brainwashed. And ended by saying she had no regrets. She cried as she left.
The jurors, like everyone else, were left wondering who she was crying for. They didn’t know which part of her to believe.
The woman who smiled and remembered, or the one who wept and said she was brainwashed, based on whatever that means, a woman declaring both agency and erasure. A happy participant, then a wimpering pawn.
She had become everything OneTaste had taught her not to be.
Brainwashing is very real and very dangerous to Becky Uma Halpern. It made her happy, she said. All it takes is a feeble mind.
The OneTaste Trial #2: Prosecution’s Secret Weapon: Presiding Judge Diane Gujarati
