Frank Parlato
In an ongoing federal trial in Brooklyn, prosecutors allege a conspiracy at the company known as OneTaste.
This series tells that story.
Two women started a company. The feds touched the indictment button. Now they’re in federal court facing 20 years.
The OneTaste trial is an artifact of the scorched-earth tactics of a government drunk on power, of how language is twisted, memory rewritten, and freedom rebranded as coercion.
It isn’t about crime. It’s about confusion, where consensual touch becomes a federal offense.
Judge Sustains All Government Objections
Brooklyn, N.Y. —
The fix was in. Anyone watching could see it.
It was the fifth day of the trial of Rachel Cherwitz and Nicole Daedone.
Presiding Judge Diane Gujarati issued a series of evidentiary rulings favoring the prosecution.
The lawyers spoke. The judge responded, not to their arguments, but to some hidden directive no one else could see.
Each time the defense offered an objection or introduced evidence, Judge Gujarati sided with the government, as though deviation from the prescribed outcome was somehow a crime.
Defense counsel Celia Cohen and Jennifer Bonjean objected to excluding defense exhibits and the judge’s consistent sustaining of government objections.
What was said exactly may not matter. What mattered was the rhythm of disapproval, the repeated “sustained” from a judge whose tone implied finality.
But when Bonjean requested the videos, the mask of impartiality slipped. It was as if Bonjean dropped a bomb: “I want the tapes preserved.” Her request was reasonable. Therefore, it was denied.
Not only denied. The judge lost her cool. The shouting started.
Bonjean had requested that videos excluded from the jury be preserved for the record. No juror heard it. Only the walls, the record, and the slow scratch of ink that would one day spell out the word “appeal.”
Judge Gujarati abruptly ended oral arguments without further discussion.
Double Standard Judiciary
So it’s more games:
Judge Gujarati has not yet ruled on Rule 412 motions concerning the admissibility of sexual history to impeach government witnesses.
It’s a fun game to watch the government try to convict someone for consensual sex while refusing to let the defense ask about consensual sex.
In USA v. Cherwitz and Daedone, federal prosecutors have built a case around consensual sexual activity between adults. Yet, Judge Diane Gujarati won’t even rule whether they’re allowed to ask about sex.
Judge, if you’re scared of the facts, maybe you shouldn’t be presiding over a case about them.
So here are a few: The issue is consent. They were all adults. Grown men and women. Some of them searching. Some of them sure. No one locked the doors. They didn’t drug anybody.
Nobody was locked in a room. No one was trafficked across state lines in the back of a van. No one was forced to join. No one was forced to stay. They left when they wanted.
The government says, “They didn’t know what they wanted.”
But what if they did? What if they chose to be there? Then they left.
Coercion is Brainwashing
The feds are frothing at the mouth because someone dared to sell self-improvement with a side of orgasm.
You don’t like it? Don’t join. It’s not a cult. It’s California.
I will tell you what the case is: The years pass. The same participants, now older, now disconnected, are told they were victims.
Their memories are edited. Their motives revised. They had sex. So what. They liked it. Now they’re crying in court and calling it trauma?
No one dragged them. No one beat them. They just didn’t want to feel stupid for loving something the world didn’t understand.
And, yes, the old “you were brainwashed because you liked it too much.”
They were adults. They chose to be there. They liked it. Then they left.
Now, someone says it was abuse.
That’s not how freedom works.
Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.
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[…] federal prosecutrix, Judge Diane Gujarati presided—and delivered every ruling the government […]
https://web.archive.org/web/20180906115605/https://artvoice.com/2018/09/04/a-cult-worse-than-nxivm-a-mothers-plea-for-me-to-help-get-her-daughter-out-of-onetaste/#.W5EV2HbP32c
“OneTaste” simply sounds like a prostitution ring. The organization mediated the exchange of money for sex between “investors” and “members”.
Investors gave OneTaste money to support courses. Members paid money for the courses. Through the courses, members performed sex acts for investors.
The process had sort of a meta-layer, as old as other labor and sex trafficking rings around the world, which encouraged members to be financially and psychologically dependent upon the organization.
Members testified courses were expensive. Paying for courses gradually indebted members to the organization, financially. Like sharecroppers or indentured servants, members eventually owed OneTaste “work”. “Work” often meant sex acts.
Members also testified that the courses themselves, amplified by living conditions and active messaging by OneTaste leaders, isolated members from family and friends, and disrupted usual routines. These factors psychologically broke down members, and isolated them from social support systems. This is how cults influence.
American society already encourages debt (school, home, auto, general consumer), is notoriously isolationist (loneliness epidemic), and proves it is easy to influence members into stupid, expensive, self-destructive behavior. (TikTok, anyone?)
At some point, it makes sense to engage social support systems to counter activities harmful to society. The legal system is a great venue for this, and has been used in multiple areas – mob racketeering, gambling fraud, political corruption. Organizations can take advantage of people, and the larger they are, the more people can get hurt. OneTaste certainly is a case that should go to court to protect members of society.
Society, and each of its members, are far too complex to see enforceable standards for abuse reduced to “drugging,” “dragging,” “locking in a room” and “beating”.
There are genuine crimes happening in the world. The FBI should go find them rather than get involved in a case of disgruntled employees. There’s nothing illegal here. There’s no case.
It’s obvious in the comments who has skin in the game and what side of the fence you are on about personal responsibility. It was all fun when you were in the inner circle but then something happened that you just couldn’t talk about. Then it became a cult and now we have this.
Right to the point!!! The charges are bogus!! Consent is everything. These are adults. Take responsibility. We’ve all had regrets. Own them. Thank you for covering this.
frames the federal case against OneTaste as a government overreach and an attack on personal freedom. But beneath the dramatic language and courtroom theatrics lies a troubling reality he refuses to acknowledge: OneTaste is not simply a misunderstood self-help organization — it is accused of being a criminal enterprise that manipulated, exploited, and abused vulnerable individuals under the guise of wellness.
The Department of Justice has alleged that women were coerced into performing sexual acts — not out of free will or spiritual awakening — but to satisfy paying customers and drive profits. This isn’t a matter of “consensual touch,” as the article misleadingly puts it. It’s a matter of power dynamics, coercion, and manipulation. Employees and recruits were allegedly pressured into sexual encounters as part of their “job duties,” and those who resisted risked isolation, financial ruin, or retaliation.
Parlato’s romanticization of this abuse as “California freedom” is not just irresponsible — it’s dangerous. Consent cannot exist in an environment where power, control, and financial dependency are weaponized against those seeking healing or belonging. The testimonies from survivors, not the government, have shaped this case. To dismiss their experiences as “edited memories” is a slap in the face to every person who has been exploited and is now brave enough to speak out.
This trial isn’t about criminalizing sex. It’s about confronting abuse disguised as empowerment. It’s about holding accountable those who enriched themselves by turning intimacy into a business transaction — at the expense of human dignity.
No amount of courtroom theatrics or opinion pieces can change that.
Has there been testimony to support your claims? That as an employee on employee time they were forced to perform sex acts with paying customers? And evidence that they were threatened with job loss of they failed to comply?
If this is accurate I would like to hear the evidence and incidents from the alleged victims themselves. All I’m hearing is vague allegations of undefined brainwashing. Thank you.
Perhaps consent itself is not realistic. Like release forms not being release forms. In the ongoing process of finding who to blame for my life the FBI has determined anything goes. Welcome to the future world that is victim driven. There is no personal responsibility. Even after you spent thirty years promoting it.