New York-The leaders of a women’s welfare company focused on the sex that promoted “orgasmic meditation” have been convicted of federal charges of forced labor.
A jury from Brooklyn found Nicole Daedone, founder of Onetas Inc., and Rachel Cherwitz, former company director of the company with headquarters in California, guilty after deliberating for less than two days after a five -week trial. The two face up to 20 years in prison when they sentence later.
The prosecutors had argued that the two women ran a scheme of years that prepared the adherents, many of them victims of sexual trauma, to do their first leg.
They said that Daedone, 57, from New York, and Cherwitz, 44, from California, used economic, sexual and psychological abuse, intimidation and indoctrination to force the members of the Untaste to sexual acts that found uncomfortable or repulsive, such as having sex with possible investors or clients.
The two told followers that the questionable acts were necessary to obtain “freedom” and “lighting” and demonstrate their commitment to the principles of the organization.
The prosecutors said that Onetas’s leaders also did not pay promised profits to the members converted into workers and even forced some to get new credit cards to continue taking the courses of the company.
The US fiscal prosecutor Nina Gupta, in her final statement last week, said that the defendants “built a business in the back” of the victims who “gave them everything”, including “their money, their time, their bodies, their dignity and, ultimately, their sanity.”
“The jury verdict has unmasked Daedone and Cherwitz for those who really are: Holgueros who took advantage of vulnerable victims by making empty promises of sexual empowerment and well -being only to manipulate them to perform the work and services for the benefit of the defendants,” said Joseph Nocella, United States lawyer for the Eastern District of New York.
Daedone’s defense team threw it as a “feminist entrepreneur who returns the ceiling” that created a unique business around sexuality and empowerment of women.
Cherwitz’s lawyer, Celia Cohen, argued that the witnesses who testified did not be forced to do anything. When they didn’t like the organization or wanted to try other things, he said, they just left.
“No matter what you think about Onetas and what they were doing, they chose it. They knew what it was,” he said in his final statement last week. “The fact that they regret the actions they took when they were younger is not evidence of a crime.”
The defendants’ lawyers said their clients maintain their innocence and intend to appeal.
“We are deeply disappointed in today’s verdict,” lawyers said in a statement on Monday. “This case raised numerous novel and complex legal problems that will require the review of the second circuit.”
Daedone co -founded Onetas in San Francisco in 2004 as a kind of self -help commune that saw female orgasms as a key to sexual and psychological well -being and interpersonal connection.
A central piece was “orgasmic meditation” or “OM”, which was carried out by men who manually stimulated women in a group environment.
The company enjoyed brilliant media coverage in the 2010 and quickly opened advanced positions from Los Angeles to London. Portrayed as a avant -garde company that prioritized the sexual pleasure of women, generated income by providing courses, coaching, OM events and other sexual practices for a rate.
Daedone sold his participation in the company in 2017 for $ 12 million, a year before Onetas’s labor and marketing practices were under scrutiny.
The company’s current owners, who have changed it from the foundation of the OM Institute, have said that their work has been misunderstood and that charges against their former executives were not justified.
They maintain sexual consent has always been a cornerstone of the organization. The company did not immediately respond to an email in search of comments.
