A vicious love triangle is at the center of the controversy around the “orgasm cult” OneTaste, according to supporters of founder Nicole Daedone, who was sentenced Monday to nine years in prison for forced labor conspiracy — coercing employees of her wellness company into sex acts with clients and investors.
And now supporters say the new company formed from OneTaste, Om, may go after Netflix and producer Lena Dunham for using a “faked” diary in their 2022 “Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste” documentary — which apparently helped fuel the FBI’s original investigation of prostitution, sex trafficking and violations of labor law.
“It was all total lies. I knew that,” Aubrey Fuller, a current member of Om, told The Post.
She is referring to journals written by former OneTaste follower Ayries Blanck, 34, and read by her sister in the documentary — claiming she was coerced into sex, beaten by a boyfriend and manipulated by group leaders.
Blanck was set to testify in Brooklyn federal court in May 2025 but, weeks earlier, prosecutors changed their tune after finding out her journal entries were not written in real time — when she took classes and taught with the group from 2012 to 2015— but instead created years later for the documentary.
The evidence was tossed last March
“Lena Dunham produced [the documentary ] … Providing fraudulent evidence is a crime. No one is talking about it,” Eli Block, an employee of Om, alleged to The Post.
The Post has reached out to Blanck, as well as a representatives for Daedone, co-defendant Rachel Cherwitz and Dunham.
Rather than being charged with sex crimes, Daedone was charged with forced labor conspiracy — accused of using psychological, emotional and financial coercion to control victims and former employees.
According to an article in the National Law Review, it’s the first time in US history that someone has been charged with forced labor conspiracy without any other crime associated with it.
Daedone, now 58, founded OneTaste in San Francisco in 2004. Marketed as mindfulness and purported to help people overcome trauma and depression, the seminars involve practitioners stroking the client’s genitals for 15 minutes — bringing them to “orgasmic meditation” (OM).
She discussed the technique in a 2011 TED talk, spring-boarding the practice into the national spotlight. OneTaste soon expanded to cities including Los Angeles, Austin, Boulder and New York City.
Since its peak during the mid-2010s, some 35,000 people have attended live events which were endorsed by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop website as well as Khloé Kardashian.
Single classes were $99, while courses to become a OneTaste coach could cost more than $10,000. But employees were reportedly paid paltry sums and the sales team — some of whom lived communally with core followers — were told they could not sleep until they met specific targets, former employees testified, according to the New York Times.
To be accepted into the OneTaste community, individuals reportedly were expected to share the same open mindedness about sex that Daedone did, and monogamy was not condoned because it threatened enlightenment.
Blanck was introduced to the group when she and her boyfriend took a day-long class in Boulder, Colorado. Soon after, they signed up for a 10-month OneTaste coaching program in New York, according to court documents.
By 2013, they had moved to New York City, where Blanck became friends with other devoted OneTaste followers. She was, apparently quite generous with her pals.
“It was not uncommon for Blanck to suggest to other women with whom she felt comfortable that she thought it would be a good idea if they had sex with her boyfriend,” according to court documents related to a 2022 defamation suit filed by OneTaste’s lawyers against Blanck. (The case is still active and a trial is slated for 2027. In a court filing, Blanck denied all allegations in OneTaste’s complaint.)
Blanck “made it clear that she had an open relationship with her boyfriend,” whom she referred to as her “husband,” documents from the 2022 court case allege.
On social media and in private text messages, she praised the OneTaste community. In the group’s web portal for students, she exclaimed “I love orgasmic meditation” and called Cherwitz a mentor whom she “loved very much.”
But, according to court documents, things shifted when her relationship with her boyfriend ended in November 2014 — and he began seeing Fuller after they met at a 14-day OneTaste program in LA.
“I am going to f–king kill him and her. Like I’m going to f–king kill her and him,” Blanck allegedly texted a member of the OneTaste staff, per the court docs.
“I wish I had humans [sic] words to describe the depth to which I hate you and hope you suffer and hurt,” she allegedly wrote to Fuller in a Facebook message included in the court papers. “I don’t though so it’s a good thing you can feel because you will feel this for a very long time. I hate you.”
Fuller, who is no longer with the man, told The Post: “It was pure vitriolic. I was shocked.”
In January 2015, Fuller alleged in documents related to the case set to go to trial next year, Blanck “attacked” her in a New York apartment.
“She found me and punched me in the side of the head,” Fuller told The Post.
Apparently feeling betrayed, Blanck left the OneTaste community to which she had once been so devoted.
By August 2015, Blanck had hired a lawyer who sent a demand letter to OneTaste — claiming a “hostile work environment, quid pro quo sex [sic] harassment, failure to prevent harassment, failure to pay minimum wage and overtime wages and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
She alleged that OneTaste leaders had “forced and manipulated her into having sex and ‘OM’ing’ with OneTaste staff, supervisors and customers (especially high paying customers).”
OneTaste, court docs say, deemed the claims “completely false, and completely made up by Blanck.”
Still, they settled, paying Blanck $325,000 in a mediation that required her to sign an NDA agreeing not to disparage OneTaste or its employees.
In 2017, Daedone sold her stake in OneTaste for $12 million to Anjuli Ayer, a member who joined in hopes of finding a cure for her chronic fatigue from mercury poisoning. Cherwitz left the company a year later.
Around this time, according to court docs, Blanck concocted a media campaign to take down OneTaste — wrangling friends to speak to Bloomberg for an article about company culture.
In it, 16 former staffers and community members, most speaking anonymously because of NDAs, accused the group of “psychological manipulation” and preying “on people’s weaknesses.”
The article is said to have prompted the FBI’s investigation.
In May 2021, Blanck told a friend who spoke to Bloomberg that she had been approached by director Sarah Gibson about making a documentary to be produced by Dunham.
The Post has reached out to Gibson.
Some followers attempted to block the release of the documentary, claiming the film included sexually explicit stolen footage. Netflix eventually released it with their faces blurred, and the film was a sensation.
In addition to her prison sentence, Daedone was mandated this week to pay a $12 million judgment and the court awarded $877,877.64 in restitution to seven victims, all former employees of OneTaste. Her sales partner and co-defendant, Rachel Cherwitz, was sentenced to more than six years in prison for her role in the scheme, on the same charges.
More than 200 letters of support were sent to Judge Diane Guijarti, The Post previously reported.
CNN personality Van Jones, a Yale-educated attorney who worked as a special advisor to President Barack Obama, called Daedone “a woman of uncommon wisdom, grace and moral courage.” And “The West Wing” actor Richard Schiff admitted that he does “not know Nicole personally beyond brief interactions,” but he has “observed the deep respect and affection my wife [‘Sisters’ actress Sheila Kelley] holds for her.”
Om owner Ayer, after the sentencing on Monday, told The Post: “This started as a five-year sex trafficking investigation. It wound up being about thought crime. Nothing this legally novel has appeared since the Salem witch trials. Forced labor conspiracy without any forced labor. No force, no coercion, no trafficking. The conviction was based entirely on a theory of brainwashing.”
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