Toe-Tal Recruitment: Man Clipping Toenails Lures Anthea Gillick to Orgasm ‘Cult’ as Prosecutors EmbarASS Themselves in OneTaste Case

Her name was Anthia Gillick.  She went by Brooke Sheffer when she was in OneTaste.

Assistant US Attorney Kaitlin Farrell, the prudish prosecutor from Brooklyn, was going to elicit some truthful testimony. She did so – but not by design.

A whole book could be written about this one testimony – Brooke Sheffer AKA Anthia Gillick. We will have to do it in a series. This is part 1 of the Brooke Sheffer series.

The testimony began with Gillick/Sheffer identifying the defendants – Nicole Daedone, the owner and CEO of OneTaste – “wearing the tan wrap.” Rachel Cherwitz, head of sales – “wearing the off-white blazer.”

Under questioning from prosecutor Farrell, Gillick said she first joined OneTaste in 2013 as a student. She transitioned into a OneTaste New York, LLC franchise owner within a year. Her tenure spanned two and a half years, concluding in the summer of 2015. She entered the organization at 25. She left when she was 27.

She lived in community housing, as many did.  

OM Not Quite a Secret

Gillick said the main practice was orgasmic meditation. Not a secret. It’s not some hidden thing. Just a thing they did. A thing with a name. A thing they talked about openly.

Prosecution: And if you could just briefly explain what OMing was.

Witness: It is a 15-minute partnered pussy stroking practice, was the way that they described it, but almost only of the female genitalia.

OneTaste Taught About Sex – and Its Students Tried It

Gillick described OneTaste’s services – BDSM demonstrations, “ritual piercing,” and “magic school.” Gillick confirmed that OneTaste offered the services in paid classes and retreats.

Gillick’s family had wealth and paid her expenses. She grew up in rural Colorado, got a bachelor’s degree, moved to San Francisco and worked at a restaurant. 

Gillick Wanted to Be in the Circus

Prosecution: And what did you do after completing undergraduate?

Witness: I moved to San Francisco to start a business in aerial silks or circus arts.

Prosecution: And what are aerial silks?

Witness: If you’ve ever seen Pink, the sheets that hang from the ceilings was my main apparatus, and so that was aerial silks, and I taught that.

Prosecution: Sorry, what do you do on the sheets?

Witness: Circus tricks, performances.

Prosecution: When did you first learn about OneTaste?

Witness: Pretty soon after — so I was living in various neighborhoods in San Francisco, and then I moved down to the South of Market District, and pretty soon after I moved, I was walking down the street and there was a guy clipping his toenails on a bench who came running after me and he was …a student at OneTaste, and he asked me to coffee.

Prosecution: And what happened after that?

Witness: We went to coffee … He just basically said he was living in a commune in San Francisco which are very common. So I was not very interested. And then we kept running into each other. And eventually, he kept asking me to his event… called Turn On, and the name kind of freaked me out, so I kept saying no. And then, eventually, he invited me to a lecture that Nicole Daedone was doing on just — it was informational on orgasmic meditation.

Prosecution: And did you attend that?

Witness: Yeah. And I agreed to attend that after going to another coffee with him, where I grilled him for 45 minutes.

Analysis of What I Think I Just Heard

Let me get this straight: a girl from Colorado comes to San Francisco to start a circus act. She meets a toenail-trimming guy on the sidewalk who keeps asking her to a thing called “Turn On,” which sounds like a 1970s porno club, and she says no. Then he says, “It’s actually a talk on orgasmic meditation,” and that wins her over?

And now the feds want you to believe she was coerced? 

Anthea Gillick, Colorado native, aerialist, and part-time restaurant hostess, was recruited not through violence or threat—but by toenails.

A man grooming himself on a public bench offered enlightenment. She resisted. Then returned. Resistance became curiosity. Curiosity led to coffee. And the lecture that followed? A gateway not to a cult but to a question: what if pleasure had a method?

She was chasing a dream—circus arts. When she finally agreed to attend the OneTaste lecture, it wasn’t under duress—it was after a 45-minute cross-examination over coffee. That’s not victimhood. That’s agency.

Let me reduce it further: Colorado kid. Moves to San Francisco. Wants to hang from ceilings doing ribbon tricks. Working two jobs, mooching from mom and dad. That’s how this whole federal circus starts.

Stunned By Daedone

Gillick goes to see Daedone and is amazed and explains it all in one impressive run-on sentence.

Witness: Yeah, I’d never met anyone who, like, knew themselves so well and was so, like, aware of their flaws and willing to just, like, own them and just, like – it was like she had mapped her entire psyche, basically, and was able to just talk about it and it just seemed very powerful and I really wanted to – like, I was struggling with my aerial silks business, it was not going very well, and I really wanted to become a powerful businessman and I sort of thought if it woman could sell orgasm, I could sell circus, she could teach me to sell circus. But I was not interested in the practice at all.

Prosecution: So, after attending that first event, what did you do?

Witness: I kind of ran out the door. They were trying to persuade me to take a How to OM class, and I wanted no part of it….

Prosecution: So did you sign up for an additional class that night?

Witness: I did not.

Gillick left the event without enrolling in a class . She leaves the building on her own—but eventually returned, voluntarily.

Rural Colorado to Clitoral Enlightenment: Brooke’s Big Move

She wanted to learn how to pitch her dreams like Nicole pitched hers. That’s not cult thinking. That’s life thinking. You find someone who has what you need and follow them for a while. Gillick said no when she wanted to. That’s what matters.

What the hell kind of courtroom is this?

The true manipulation here is not Daedone’s. It’s the prosecution’s distortion of motive and autonomy.

A place where inspiration is mistaken for indoctrination. Where choosing to attend a seminar and walking out on your own is called coercion. Where ambition is reframed as exploitation—because the topic wasn’t stocks or supplements, but sex.

And it only gets worse. Way worse. Cringeworthy worse. Stupid prosecutor worse.

Stay tuned for Gillick-Sheffer part 2.

Spoiler alert. Gillick wasn’t shackled to a massage table.

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Frank Parlato

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.

Frank Parlato

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.

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