Elizabeth Nolan Brown of Reason Delivers Grand Spanking of Prosecuters in OneTaste Case

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Elizabeth Nolan Brown just published an in-depth article, The Weak, Weird Case Against a Supposed ‘Orgasm Cult’ on Reason the “nation’s leading libertarian magazine.”

The article is the antithesis of Bloomberg’s “The Dark Side of the Orgasmic Meditation Company” published in June 2018.

Bloomberg used doctored photos, hearsay and used dealt primarily with anonymous sources, Brown focused on named sources to cover OneTaste Inc, the company that teaches Orgasmic Meditation.

Through the story, Brown virtually demolishes the feeble prosecutors at the Eastern District of New York. While you should read the entire story, here are some key points this true investigative journalist and seasoned writer makes in her story.

In April 2023—nearly five years after the FBI started investigating OneTaste the US Attorney instructed a federal grand jury to indict Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz.

The trial is scheduled to start May 5.

Here are some excerpts from the Reason story:

The two face a single count of conspiracy to commit forced labor, an offense allegedly undertaken “between approximately 2004 and 2018.”

Neither woman is charged with actually forcing labor or engaging in other criminal acts. …

“The Government need not prove that anyone was, in fact, victimized by a conspiracy,” U.S. Attorney Lauren Howard Elbert told the court during a status hearing last April. “They need only prove that an agreement existed to victimize somebody.”

Leading up to the trial, prosecutors have seemed hard-pressed to prove even this. In outlining the case, they have employed dubious theories of criminality, such as “coercive control,” and they have relied on expansive readings of legal terms like “serious harm.” Above all, they have exploited rank sensationalism, as though hoping that throwing in lots of details about kinky sex and free love while suggesting cultish behavior will do where evidence of legal wrongdoing falls short.

… Nowhere did the indictment mention Daedone or Cherwitz using or conspiring to use force, threats, physical restraint, abuse of legal process, or almost any of the other elements of the crime of forced labor…

Furthermore, the indictment provided no details about when, where, or with whom the alleged violations took place, nor any specific acts they involved….

….

[P]rosecutors seek to seriously limit what Daedone’s and Cherwitz’s lawyers can talk about at trial. They ask the judge to block them from mentioning anything about “victims’ or other witnesses’ sexual activity” (even though this is at the heart of many of the allegations), from making arguments about the government’s alleged motives for this prosecution, or from impugning the FBI’s investigatory conduct.

They ask that the defense be barred from submitting any evidence “of the defendants’ ‘good acts’ or non-commission of ‘bad acts,'” or any evidence on the benefits of orgasmic meditation.

They also ask the judge to “limit cross-examination” of victims and witnesses.

…

Oddly, the government does not seem to dispute that people came and went as they pleased, nor that they nominally consented to all activity. Its contention is something weirder: that the defendants were so psychologically manipulative that it rendered people’s consent meaningless—that effectively, yes meant no.

…

In their bill of particulars, prosecutors’ nods to “reputational harm” mostly involve allegations that people would face disapproval within the group if they went against OneTaste practices or teachings. …

Alleged attempts to cause “financial harm” basically boil down to encouraging imprudent financial decisions, such as opening up a credit card or borrowing money from friends to pay for OneTaste courses. There’s little attempt to directly connect any of it to a scheme to extract forced labor: It’s not as if you’d be in debt to the defendants if you defaulted on your credit card payments.

And many odd assumptions underpin the government’s statements about financial harm. Take its critique of Cherwitz for “enroll[ing] Jane Doe 16 in a OneTaste program knowing she had no money.” What was OneTaste supposed to do? Reject people who were possibly making poor financial decisions? This isn’t an onus we put on other businesses.

… Prosecutors …also seem to want to make victims out of anyone who did something later regretted. For instance: “Because of [OneTaste] teachings, Jane Doe 15 once engaged in sex with a man who was older and who she did not find physically attractive,” they write.

…. To the government, Daedone’s teachings amount to attempts at “coercive control.” The defendants call this an “amorphous theory that the law does not support, where…any perceived negative treatment of an alleged victim, however attenuated from performing of labor, could be labeled psychological coercion.”

…The lack of sex-related charges casts doubt on what one might read between the lines.

Daedone and Cherwitz’s team argued to the court in an October 25, 2024, filing. “It has executed a classic bait and switch, charging one count all while planning to try a very different case.”

….They also say the definition of “serious harm” is so vague that it fails under the Constitution’s Due Process clause…

…For all its wild details, the case is missing both conspiracy and forced labor elements.

Prosecutors seem to want this case to rest on the idea that the company’s bigwigs were mean girls and sex weirdos who used orgasms as tools of mind control.

From the lurid occult associations to the implied sex trafficking allegations, there’s precious little substance to this case—just salaciousness, scandal, and the all-too-familiar sense that female sexuality is something to be suppressed and controlled by the state.