Alleged “orgasm cult” OneTaste is actually just a “wellness” company like SoulCycle and Crossfit, an attorney for the controversial group’s glamorous founder argued in Brooklyn federal court Thursday.
Lawyer Julia Gatto claimed the feds don’t have a case against her client Nicole Daedone — accused of grooming members into having sex with investors and clients for more than a decade — because her “scientifically backed” business was totally legitimate.
“People who take the classes do the training. Many of them become practitioners,” Gatto told Judge Diane Gujarati about the company, which promoted “orgasmic meditation” for women.
“Many of them become practitioners, and then just like any other successful wellness business like SoulCycle or Crossfit, they meet, and they’re like-minded people. They’re elevating their practice — they join together.”
The attorney also claimed that OneTaste occupies the same “space” as yoga and meditation by helping people hone their craft.
Prosecutors have argued that Daedone and her former head of sales, Rachel Cherwitz, ran the business like a cult by recruiting victims with prior trauma and promising to fix their sexual dysfunction.
The duo allegedly forced members and employees into debt and subjected them to “economic, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse” through “surveillance, indoctrination and intimidation” to get free work out of them, according to the indictment.
In her effort to persuade the judge to toss the case, Daedone’s attorney on Thursday argued prosecutors misrepresented the business — and that the alleged victims joined of their own accord.
“This isn’t membership in some secret society,” Gatto quipped. “This is a community developed around like-minded people who are introduced.”
She accused the feds of “conjuring up victims” to bolster was she argued was a weak case, claiming case agents had started re-interviewing people who had previously said they weren’t victims of the alleged scheme.
“There is actually is no meat to the bones of this case,” Gatto later said.
Daedone and Cherwitz have been charged with forced labor conspiracy for the alleged scheme, which purportedly ran for 14 years until it ended in 2018.
The pair, who pleaded not guilty last year, were present for the hour-long hearing, but didn’t comment.
Cherwtiz’s attorney, Jenny Kramer, argued that the brevity of the indictment — a mere 14 paragraphs — was light considering it took five years before the charges were unselaed in June 2023.
Federal prosecutor Lauren Howard Elbert told the court that Daedone and Cherwitz’s alleged manipulative tactics and techniques will be presented as evidence through witness testimony at trial, which is slated to begin in January 2025.
Elbert wrote in court papers the feds had “summaries of portions of witness statements given by over 20 witnesses and identified each of the witnesses.”
The judge didn’t rule on the defense’s motion to dismiss the case but ordered Daedone and Cherwitz to return to court for a status conference on May 3.
If convicted, the pair face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
OneTaste — founded in San Francisco in 2004 with operations in New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Denver — was the subject of the 2022 Netflix documentary called “Orgasm Inc.” which chronicled the rise and fall. of the company.
