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Disclosure: OneTaste is an advertiser at Revolver News. Advertisers have no editorial input, and reporting is independent.

By Joe Brucker

BROOKLYN (REVOLVER NEWS) – The federal government rested its case against two founders of an intentional community and wellness education company Monday. Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz, founder and former head of sales for OneTaste, respectively, each face one count of Forced Labor Conspiracy – a charge with a maximum sentence of 20 years. Their defense argues the case raises worrisome First Amendment issues around freedom of religion, drawing unlikely allies in social conservatives. Federal prosecutors allege their unique beliefs and practices were used to coerce participants into underpaid or unpaid labor for their own benefit.

While seemingly always being described in the air of taboo, OneTaste and its leaders haven’t always been subject to such malignment. In the 2010s, OneTaste and its founder were recommended and recognized by everyone from gonzo masculinity writer Tucker Max to biohacker Tim Ferriss to writers in Buddhism, startups, alternative medicine, and personal finance.

But OneTaste’s unique blend of intentional community, self-help, startup culture, and sexuality has placed what might otherwise be benign into fodder for a seven-year saga of scandalizing exposés and federal investigation. Prosecutors allege OneTaste’s “combination of tactics” was “designed” to “compromise” the identity and psychological state of students, staff, and volunteers so that they’d work for their benefit.

Those tactics have included, according to the government, “sexual abuse,” financial coercion, and psychological abuse. The defense has countered that those same actions and beliefs are the business practices of a normal sales culture, combined with the social dynamics and expectations of groups like CrossFit gyms and yoga ashrams.

What is OneTaste?

According to testimony by its co-founder Robert Kandell, OneTaste was founded out of a world of sexually focused intentional communities and haphazardly found their way.

Kandell testified he and Daedone met at The Welcomed Consensus and, before founding OneTaste, expected to take over More University, both California intentional communities. It was also out of a practice of these communities that Daedone created OneTaste’s signature concept: “Orgasmic Meditation,” or OM. In Kandell’s telling, OM was borne out of Daedone’s transformation of “Deliberate Orgasm,” which was less structured and more male-focused.

The pair also iterated to find its footing. They focused on a practice to teach “personal responsibility in communications” but returned to sexuality after students found Daedone’s teachings too “intense,” “weighty,” and “complex.”

Kandell, a former software engineer, invested $350k of the $500k he received from selling his house, which the team used to live and work out of various properties, ultimately landing on Folsom Street in San Francisco. To make money, they offered courses, workshops, yoga classes, and massages. They’d also tried a bookstore and a café. The team offered a “work trade” program, allowing community members to live with and take courses for free in exchange for contributing various types of work.

OneTaste’s community and offerings were also openly sexual—with offerings like Naked Yoga being found on city tour guides and residents finding their Orgasmic Meditation classes via meetup.com.

By 2007, Kandell testified that the organization sought to more formally structure the community element as distinct from OneTaste’s business retreats and courses—a process that he said was gradual.

Testimony showed that many of OneTaste’s team members had feet on both sides of these lines—sometimes as volunteers, or as customers, or as staff. The radical ideas about communication and sexuality that played a role in distinguishing the group in earlier favorable press and public reception have also played a role in the government’s case against it.

Kandell testified that he thought the word “manipulation” had unfairly “negative connotations,” and he defined it as simply “directing towards a higher goal” or “past their own perceived abilities and limitations.” Prosecutors argued that because OneTaste’s team “pushed people past their comfort zones” for sales, as Kandell testified, the team was criminally conspiring to “manipulate staff into working longer hours and working harder.”

OneTaste also assigned some community members “handlers” for attending to widely varied personal needs—from cooking and cleaning to sexual activity. In particular, multiple OneTaste community members testified that they’d been assigned as a “handler” to Reese Jones, a client of OneTaste, who would later date Daedone and also make a loan to the company. All testified that they didn’t turn down the request—only one voiced not wanting to participate “at the end” of their time.

One witness testified that because Daedone taught that “the most powerful version” of herself could be reached by “letting go” of her preferences, she worried she’d face “shaming” and “disapproval” for saying no to suggestions and be “put in the doghouse socially and professionally.” She testified that it would be “like death” to her position in the world of OneTaste because it was such a “big deal” to be offered the opportunity. The defense has argued that this amounts to “fear of being kicked out of the group chat” and “loss of social status,” which didn’t amount to serious harm or the threat of it.

Multiple witnesses testified that they’d taken on five-figure debts to take courses and that OneTaste team and community members had encouraged them.

Daedone and Cherwitz, the government argued, “caused her severe psychological harm” and coerced Gill into performing sexual labor because she was afraid of Daedone.

Testimony thus far may not reflect the general experience of OneTaste community members or where the alleged victims would be if not for their interaction with OneTaste.

The Court has blocked testimony regarding positive experiences with OneTaste on the grounds that no matter how infrequent abuses may be, they would still be criminal. Also, as argued by the defense, many of the victims who sought OneTaste’s teaching and community brought the behaviors or mental health issues cited as scandalizing evidence with them to OneTaste.

Revolver will continue reporting through the verdict.


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