Who is Nicole Daedone? Age and more explored as OneTaste founder charged over cult allegations

A s*xual wellness founder, Nicole Daedone, was charged on Tuesday, June 6, alongside her sales director Rachel Cherwitz on allegations of running an “orgasm cult” like a commune in northern California. The OneTaste founder, who ran a s*xual wellness retreat between 2004 to 2017, is charged with forced labour after she was accused of fostering a toxic work environment.

The indictment went on to allege that between 2004 and 2018 members and employees were forced into s*x and manipulated into incurring debt in order to take courses that they claimed could elevate their lives.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, OneTaste founder Nicole Daedone, 56, and the company’s former head of sales, Rachel Cherwitz, 43, falsely advertised their s*x-centric company as a wellness retreat that would help members heal from past trauma.

Instead, the duo allegedly subjected the members to years of s*xual, economic, emotional, and psychological abuse where the acts were surveilled and later weaponized against them until they were completely reliant on the company for basic needs. Michael Driscoll, the FBI assistant director-in-charge said:

“The defendants advertised their company as being able to help individuals recover from past trauma. In reality, they allegedly targeted their victims in order to manipulate them not only into debt but to limit their independence and create a reliance on OneTaste for basic needs.”

OneTaste was founded by Nicole Daedone in 2004 and was described as a “cutting-edge company dedicated to bringing a new definition of orgasm to women,” focussing on orgasmic meditation or “OM.” Initially, a relatively small company grew steam in the ensuing years after she was endorsed by stars like Gwyneth Paltrow, following copious ted talks where she amassed millions of followers.

Nicole Daedone ( Far Right) pictured at a group panel (Image via Goop/Twitter)

However, in recent years, OneTaste has drawn criticism over its predatory practices. The indictment alleged that between 2004 and 2018, the company under the guise of empowerment and wellness allegedly focused on targeting people who had gone through past trauma.

They then offered pricey courses that promised to heal through s*xual liberation. During the course, the members would live and have intercourse under surveillance in warehouses with other students and sometimes even with the founder.

The students were then allegedly browbeaten into buying more courses, forcing them into debt. If a person failed to pay the required fee, they were recruited as part of the sales team, where they were forced to coerce people into buying the pricey course.

The allegations against the ‘cult’ were exposed in the 2020 podcast “orgasm cult” on BBC and then revealed in a 2022 Netflix documentary Orgasm inc: The Story of OneTaste.

The investigations and subsequent charges against the company stem from the allegations in the podcast and the documentary. In a press release, U.S. Attorney said:

“Daedone and Cherwitz are both charged with forced labour conspiracy in connection with a years-long scheme to obtain the labour and services of a group of OneTaste members—including volunteers, contractors, and employees of OneTaste—by subjecting them to economic, s*xual, emotional and psychological abuse, surveillance, indoctrination, and intimidation.”

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Nicole Daedone obtained a semantics, Gender communications degree from San Francisco State University

Nicole Daedone (Image via Strange and Unexplained with Daisy Eagan/Twitter)

Per her Linkedin, Nicole Daedone, a California native, who describes herself as an author, consultant, teacher and entrepreneur, graduated from Leigh High School before obtaining a semantics, Gender communications degree from San Francisco State University sometime in the 1980s.

Daedone then went on to start multiple businesses in the San Francisco Bay area. In 1995 Daedone reportedly opened the 111 Minna Street Art Gallery before founding Fill Up America, an all-volunteer, non-profit organization in 2001, which focused on feeding the community. The company shut its doors in 2017.

In 2004, Daedone established One Taste in San Francisco before expanding to New York, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Austin, London, and Boulder, Colorado.

Both Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz left the company in 2018 after a damaging article titled “The Dark Side of the Orgasmic Meditation Company,” was published on Bloomberg.

In response to the recent indictment against former CEO Nicole Daedone, OneTaste's present CEO Anjuli Ayer, in a statement to New York Times, called the federal charges baseless and unjustified.