United States v. Daedone and Cherwitz: A Series on the Precedent

On June 9, 2025, in United States v. Daedone et al., No. 1:23-cr-00146-DG (E.D.N.Y.), a federal jury returned guilty verdicts against defendants Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz on a single count of conspiracy to commit forced labor in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1594(b), predicated on the substantive offense codified at 18 U.S.C. § 1589.

On March 30, 2026, US District Judge Diane Gujarati imposed sentences of 108 months’ imprisonment as to Daedone and 78 months as to Cherwitz.

Congress passed the forced labor law in 2000 to protect trafficked domestic servants, sweatshop captives, and women held in brothels. Forced labor was the work extracted from victims because they could not leave.

But this case was different. No one was held.

Two women, Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz, were convicted without any finding of physical force or spoken threats. Yet nine women, educated, and capable, said they were afraid to leave.

There is something almost human, almost painfully human, in the idea that a woman might remain not because she is trapped, but because she is afraid of going out the unlocked door.

The old stories were simple. A locked room. A threat. A command. Stay and work. Here, the door was open. The women could walk out.

The theory was not you cannot go, but you dare not go.

Freedom?

Coercion once meant locks, threats, the unmistakable weight of force pressing down on a human will making them stay.

In this case, of Daedone and Cherwitz, the serious harm was not staying but going. Somewhere in that subtle reversal—between an open door and an unwilling step through it—freedom exists but is no longer recognized as freedom.

Leaving meant being cast out. From Daedone. From Cherwitz. From the community. The serious harm was excommunication.

So they stayed.

And the case turned on a fragile idea. Fear, not punishment in the old sense. It’s a lonely kind of fear. The kind that persuades a person to remain, even when the door is open.

Once, the matter would have been clear. If a person feared loneliness, or being cast out into the cold of the world, that was sorrow. It was not forced labor.

Not that the law recognized.

They called it brainwashing. That was the conspiracy. Then, almost as if from another age, comes another word.

Witches

A government witness, Michal Neria, said the defendants believed they were witches.

Witches, she said. “A hundred percent. I don’t think it. I know it.”

Suddenly the courtroom felt less like a place of law, and more like a place where belief itself was on trial.

The defense argued her testimony was absurd. The prosecutor, Kayla Bensing, admitted it but told the jury, “The defendants made her believe that. They targeted somebody who would believe that.”

Screenshot 2024-06-08 at 6.11.07 PM - Frank Report — AUSA Kayla Bensing

Coercion?

She spoke of coercion that could not be seen, of brainwashing that could not be touched, of influence that lived somewhere between belief and fear.

Nine witnesses said it was mind control. They left. All nine. They might have left sooner. If not for what they believed was done to them.

There were thousands who took the course, went to workshops, stayed or went. Nine came forward and spoke of the chains of the mind.

Of witchcraft—a word that carries with it centuries of misunderstanding and accusation—and of the quiet dread of being shunned, of losing one’s place among the others. Each left. They walked out from whence they had entered.

No guards stopped them. No barriers held them. Each departed at the precise moment of their choosing.

The questions linger.

When does influence turn into coercion?

When does belief turn into control?

When does fear of being cast away become forced labor?

When does what was used to convict Daedone and Cherwitz get used on new people? To others?

Can a precedent reappear in places not yet imagined?

Will the line between protection and overreach grow thinner until it nearly vanishes?

The question is where the theory goes next. Who it indicts. What it becomes.

How far it travels before someone finally says: this is enough.