Transcription
So, this woman is about to join a cult. Now, the woman's name is Mihal. And Mihal is 28 years old, living in Brooklyn, New York.
Here's the thing about Mihal. I guess she's just not satisfied with her sex life. I guess she's self-conscious about her body, and she just has trouble asking for what she wants in bed.
But then one day in 2014, she comes across a possible solution. She hears about a company called One Taste, which is like a wellness organization focused on female empowerment, aka a cult. But Mihal doesn't know it's a cult, and she decides to give it a shot.
So, she attends one of their free introductory sessions. And when she gets there, everything seems fine. The staff members are chill and open-minded, and they all look like they've gotten their whole intimate, romantic life figured out.
But then eventually the members introduce Mihal to what's called orgasmic meditation or OM. And I'm not going to explain it to you in detail what orgasmic meditation is, but it's basically a sexual practice that the group members do to a woman for about 15 minutes. And it's supposed to not be sexual. It's supposed to be spiritual and like healing, but it's totally sexual.
But anyway, I guess Mihal tries out this OM thing and she's like, "Damn, that felt pretty good. I felt kind of fine." And she starts to feel like this is exactly what she's been missing. And lucky for her, One Taste offers classes, workshops, retreats, and coaching programs all built around this idea of OM. So, she can participate whenever she wants.
The problem is all these OM classes and workshops are very expensive. Like a weekend course can cost around $499. Retreats go for about $4,000 and coaching programs can reach $12,000. Annual memberships cost $60,000 a year. And Mihal, she doesn't have the income for all that. She works as a teacher's assistant, so she doesn't make a lot of money.
But whatever, she decides to go all in on this One Taste cult thing, even if she has to go into debt. And that's what she does. She quits her job. She gives her dog to her parents, and she moves in to One Taste's shared living spaces, which are like a series of multi-bedroom apartments or brownstones in Brooklyn.
So now she's surrounded by One Taste members all the time, and she can own whatever she wants. And pretty quickly, Mihal starts volunteering, helping to organize One Taste events and run programs. And later, she transitions into a staff role, working with others in sales. So now she's not just participating in this sex cult, she's recruiting other people into it.
The problem she keeps running into is, like I said, is that being involved in One Taste is very expensive. And it seems like the cult is trying to get as much money out of her as possible. Like at one point she's encouraged to join this $12,000 coaching program they offer and she can't afford that. And when a higher up at the cult hears that she can't afford that, she just opens a laptop and walks Mihal through how to apply for a credit card so that she can pay them with that card and just go into debt. And she does go into debt.
As the months go by, she's encouraged to spend more and more money at this place. And slowly over time, Mihal starts realizing that One Taste isn't what it claims to be. It isn't a wellness organization focused on female empowerment or healing oneself. It's a sex cult focused on pulling people in and keeping them paying for expensive courses over and over again, like a subscription service.
And it's not just Mihal. Other members of One Taste are pushed to spend more. And if they can't, they're encouraged to take on debt. And to make it worse, the staff are being misled, too. Before becoming staff, the leaders of the cult promise them big wages because I guess they make some kind of commission. But in reality, many of them are barely getting paid. Plus, they work for long hours every day with little to show for it. And when they complain about the pay, they're publicly shamed for having a scarcity mindset.
So now Mihal sees it. Other members see it, too. They know it's not right. But at the same time, walking away just isn't that simple. Apparently, it's very difficult to leave a cult. Like, they're attached to the community. They're attached to the people there. They've invested so much of themselves in it.
But here's where things get even crazier. This cult was co-founded by this woman, Nicole. And at some point, Nicole asks the members to perform OM or even smash with investors and potential new customers because, you know, they're trying to raise funds for the company. I guess when you join a sex cult, they eventually ask you to have sex with people you don't want to. So the practice that once felt like something that was fun to do suddenly starts to feel like an obligation, like something they have to do to get paid.
Not only that, but when there are disagreements between staff members, they're told to resolve them by hooking up and smashing with one another. So all of this ends up with the staff and the members doing a lot of sexual things that they wouldn't normally do under the promises of like spiritual growth.
Now, at some point during all this, this woman joins the cult, Aries. And Aries, she joins One Taste also not realizing that it's a cult. And over time, she's also pushed into things that she's just not comfortable with, like she's told to sleep with all these different men and whatnot. And she claims that she was beaten and assaulted during this time. And by 2015, Aries decides that she's had enough and she quits. Then she sues One Taste and the case ends up being settled out of court and they pay her about $325,000.
And after that, I guess the leaders at One Taste, they realize that they need to chill. Otherwise, they're going to keep getting sued. So, they stop having a lot of the group sexual activities where everyone watches. Like they stop students coming in the class. They stop the staff from coming in the office. They even stop hosting group orgasms circles. And this keeps the sexual activity a little more private and it makes it less of a legal liability.
So it looks like this cult is just going to keep going until until around 2017, 2018. The leaders at One Taste, they're looking to rebrand and get away from the allegations of being a cult and transition into more of a mainstream wellness company. So, they approach a reporter at Bloomberg News to write about their orgasmic meditation wellness trend that they've supposedly pioneered. And this reporter, she starts investigating and she speaks to former One Taste members, including Aries. And that is when she finds out about the sexual coercion and the abuse behind the scenes and she publishes an article about everything and this story blows the up.
After that, all these people start coming forward and they start speaking out against the company and One Taste reacts by shutting down their coaching program and they end all their in-person classes and they move all OM classes online. And with all this pressure, Nicole, one of the co-founders, she tries to step away and she sells her stake in One Taste for $12 million and she kind of disappears from the public eye.
However, unfortunately for her, it's kind of too late because soon the FBI steps in and they officially open an investigation and they spend about 5 years gathering all this evidence. And in 2023, bam, Nicole gets arrested and she's charged with forced labor conspiracy. Here's a picture of her. Also, bam, the other founder of the cult gets arrested, too. Here's a picture of her. And so, Nicole goes to trial and she's found guilty and she gets sentenced to 9 years in prison. While the other co-founder, her name's Rachel, Rachel also gets found guilty and she's sentenced to 6 and 1/2 years in prison.
And eventually Mihal leaves the cult.