Latest news with #forcedlabor
Forbes
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Diddy Trial: Alleged Sexual Assault And Forced Labor Victim Will Testify Today
One of the alleged victims central to prosecutors' case against music mogul Sean 'Diddy' Combs' will take the stand Thursday under the pseudonym 'Mia,' during which she is expected to testify that Combs subjected her to forced labor and sexual assault as prosecutors seek evidence for Combs' racketeering charges. One of Combs' alleged victims takes the stand Thursday under the pseudonym "Mia." (Photo by John ... More Lamparski/WireImage) 'Mia' is expected to take the stand Thursday after Combs' former stylist Deonte Nash wraps up his testimony, and Mia will remain on the stand for the rest of the week. Mia is one of the four alleged victims central to the prosecution's case against Combs, and she is referred to in court documents as 'Victim-4' (Cassie Ventura, Combs' ex-girlfriend and the prosecution's star witness, is 'Victim-1' in the indictment against Combs). Prosecutor Emily Johnson previewed Mia's testimony in her opening statement at the beginning of Combs' trial, stating Mia will testify about how 'the defendant forced himself on her sexually,' allegedly 'forcing her to perform oral sex and sneaking into her bed to penetrate her against her will,' and subjected her to forced labor. Prosecutors are expected to use Mia's testimony to support the racketeering charge against Combs, supporting their allegation that he ran a 'criminal enterprise' that engaged in forced labor and other crimes. Some legal analysts have said the prosecution's case so far has established Combs had a pattern of violence, but has been slow to sufficiently prove the racketeering charge. 'I'm not seeing the development of a racketeering enterprise,' criminal defense attorney Tama Beth Kudman told NBC News this week as the third week of testimony began, stating the prosecution has not yet demonstrated 'the thread that creates an enterprise with a unified purpose.' Ventura, one of the other four victims central to the case against Combs, testified for much of the trial's first week. In her testimony, Ventura described 'freak off' sex parties as drug-fueled nightmares Combs coerced her to participate in, which she said left her feeling 'disgusting' and in physical pain. She also alleged Combs raped her in 2018 and subjected her to years of physical violence during their relationship. Rapper Kid Cudi, another high-profile witness, testified Combs broke into his house and his car exploded weeks after Combs found out he briefly dated Ventura. Sean 'Diddy' Combs Trial: Cassie Testifies About Alleged 2018 Rape As Cross-Examination Wraps Up (Forbes) Diddy Trial: Kid Cudi Testifies Sean Combs Broke Into His House Before His Car Was Firebombed (Forbes)
New York Times
3 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
How China Uses Work to Reshape Uyghur Identity and Control a Strategic Region
The Uyghurs arrive in Chinese factory towns by train and plane, often in groups wearing matching caps or jackets. They are sent by the government to work where they are needed, whether it is molding rubber slippers, assembling automotive wiring or sorting chicken carcasses. A joint investigation by The New York Times, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Der Spiegel has revealed that Uyghurs are being sent out of their homeland, Xinjiang, on government work programs, more widely than previously documented. We found that workers are now involved in making a variety of goods for many well-known brands in factories across the country, presenting a challenge to international regulators looking to identify and purge forced labor from supply chains. Uyghur workers were traced to more than 70 factories in at least five major industries. MOnGOLIA Liaoning Xinjiang Tianjin Factories Shandong CHINA Jiangsu Anhui Hubei NEPAL Chongqing Hunan Jiangxi Fujian INDIA Guangdong MYANMAR MOnGOLIA Factories Xinjiang CHINA NEPAL INDIA MOnGOLIA Liaoning Xinjiang Tianjin Factories Shandong CHINA Jiangsu Anhui Hubei NEPAL Chongqing Hunan Jiangxi Fujian INDIA Guangdong MYANMAR MOnGOLIA Liaoning Xinjiang Tianjin Factories Shandong CHINA Jiangsu Anhui Hubei NEPAL Chongqing Hunan Jiangxi Fujian INDIA Guangdong MYANMAR Source: The LandScan Program, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL); Satellite Imagery by Esri; OpenStreetMap (OSM); Landsat Graphic by Pablo Robles Experts estimate that tens of thousands of Uyghurs have been transferred under these programs. While the precise conditions faced by these workers remain unclear, United Nations labor experts, academics and human rights advocates assert that the programs are coercive in nature. 'For these Uyghurs being forced and dragged out of their homes to go to work, it's hell,' said Rahima Mahmut, a Uyghur activist in exile and executive director of Stop Uyghur Genocide, a British-based rights group. A poultry processing plant in Dalian, Liaoning A poultry processing plant in Suizhou, Hubei 'Warmly send off Hotan migrant workers to transfer and work in the Chinese interior' 'Warmly send off Hotan migrant workers to transfer and work in the Chinese interior' 'Warmly send off Hotan migrant workers to transfer and work in the Chinese interiord' A sendoff ceremony for a group of migrant workers from the city of Hotan in Xinjiang in 2020. Source: Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
3 days ago
- Health
- New York Times
‘Orgasmic Meditation' Case Raises Question of What Constitutes Coercion
The women arrived with dreams of rebirth, community and climax. Instead, they said, their twenties were ruined by working at OneTaste, a buzzy San Francisco company that billed itself as a health and education start-up promoting female empowerment via 'orgasmic meditation.' They came to see OneTaste as a cult, but the prosecution of two of its leaders will decide whether they were coerced into working for the company or simply deluded by its teachings. The question is central to the federal case against Nicole Daedone, OneTaste's founder and former chief executive, and Rachel Cherwitz, its former head of sales, who have each been charged with one count of forced labor conspiracy. The charge carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors say Ms. Daedone and Ms. Cherwitz deployed 'psychological tactics' to groom OneTaste employees for masturbation rituals and to isolate them, leaving them reliant on the company and unable to access or even imagine a world outside. Such forced labor schemes usually employ a tangible threat, such as physical violence or the confiscation of travel documents. OneTaste employees have not described such blunt tactics. Rather, they say, they feared that defying Ms. Daedone and Ms. Cherwitz would ruin them not financially or physically, but spiritually. Lawyers for Ms. Daedone and Ms. Cherwitz have seized on that, noting that the witnesses were adults who had free will, and that some came from affluent backgrounds. They have pointed out that the witnesses did leave OneTaste, only to return when they yearned for spiritual community. 'Each time you left, you made a choice to come back,' Michael P. Robotti, a lawyer for Ms. Cherwitz, told one witness. To win convictions, prosecutors must convince jurors that Ms. Daedone and Ms. Cherwitz forced OneTaste employees to work against their will, using physical, emotional or psychological coercion, and that each woman benefited. They must show that OneTaste employees had to keep working, including by engaging in orgasmic meditation, in order to avoid 'serious harm.' Through the first half of what is expected to be a six-week trial, more than a half-dozen former OneTaste employees have testified to sexual acts rarely mentioned in a courtroom. They said they had no other options at the time, but have stopped short of saying they were threatened with violence, the loss of property or anything beyond losing their standing within OneTaste. Juda Engelmayer, a spokesman for the defendants, said the former OneTaste employees had chosen to explore an 'unconventional lifestyle,' and had then 'decided they were victims because it no longer aligns with how they see themselves.' 'This case is a dangerous attempt to criminalize regret,' Mr. Engelmayer said in a statement. Determining consent can be difficult when it comes to cults, which by nature wipe away a person's capacity to question order, said Rick Alan Ross, the founder of the Cult Education Institute. Mr. Ross, a deprogrammer who has testified as an expert in many such cases, said OneTaste appeared to bear the hallmarks of a coercive cult. Cults, Mr. Ross said, 'shut down your ability to critically think and reason,' leading people to do things they would never have considered before they joined the group. 'People have these unreasonable fears, that 'if I leave the group I'm a traitor. If I leave the group, I'm a counterrevolutionary,'' he said in an interview. NXIVM, the Albany-area sex cult led by Keith Raniere, also billed itself as a self-help organization and offered classes in its idiosyncratic rituals. But it blackmailed members with threats to release nude photographs and embarrassing secrets. So far, there has been no evidence of such acts against OneTaste employees. Witnesses said they did what Ms. Daedone and Ms. Cherwitz asked because their entire senses of self revolved around OneTaste. Moira Penza, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn who helped win a 120-year sentence against Mr. Raniere, said that unlike his victims, OneTaste participants knew that sex acts were the organization's calling card. That could prove to be an obstacle for the prosecution, she said, in its effort to persuade the jury that orgasmic meditation was forced labor. 'You want to hit the jury over the head with how terrible this is,' Ms. Penza said. The work, according to former OneTaste employees, consisted of participating in orgasmic meditation with anyone they could find, at any time. The job, which was understood to be a 24/7 endeavor, entailed a grueling daily schedule of 'OM' sessions, cooking and cleaning in the communal house and seeing to Ms. Daedone's and Ms. Cherwitz's personal needs. There were also tasks well outside orgasmic meditation. Some OneTaste employees testified that they were told to have sex with a top investor who was also Ms. Daedone's romantic partner, as well as to whip him and walk him around on a leash. People outside the community were called 'muggles,' mortals unworthy of the path of spiritual enlightenment on which OneTaste adherents had embarked. Erin Hatton, a professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, said OneTaste employees had experienced 'status coercion.' Unlike more overt and physically violent coercion, status coercion emerges when a person cannot leave a job, or 'their only community,' because of how much their self-worth depends on it. That could be a tough sell for prosecutors in a criminal trial. 'It can be a tricky argument to make, because the powers of coercion can be subtle and even invisible to outsiders,' Professor Hatton said. 'Nobody is standing over you with a whip.' And the defendants have presented a placid, upbeat image in court. Ms. Daedone, who has said that she will testify in her own defense, typically wears a flowing tan shawl each day, gazing at the jury when a defense lawyer addresses a witness. Ms. Daedone founded OneTaste in 2004, offering its courses at prices than could run into five figures. The central ritual typically involved a man stroking the genitals of a woman, with her sitting in a butterfly position on pillows, for 15 minutes. OneTaste opened centers across the country, with locations in Austin, Texas, and New York. But as the word spread, so did allegations that OneTaste was a pseudoscience-peddling cult. Employees were paid little, if at all; in fact, they paid to take OneTaste coaching courses that could cost more than $10,000. Members of OneTaste's sales team were told they could not sleep until they met certain targets, and were routinely subjected to public humiliation and ostracism. Being a saleswoman for orgasm was a surprisingly hard job, one former employee testified. The government's witnesses have described an insular culture that did not tolerate dissent, with a work environment that was unforgiving. Ms. Daedone and Ms. Cherwitz even controlled their employees' romantic relationships, witnesses said. Participation came with an expected adherence to Ms. Daedone's views on sexuality and relationships, which looked down on monogamy. OneTaste workers were frequently directed to abandon monogamy because it threatened their path to enlightenment. At least once, OneTaste's leaders personally destroyed a romantic relationship by demanding that one person sleep with another person outside the relationship. When the former employees were asked in court why they participated in sexual activities that were uncomfortable, one of them, who is now a medical resident, said that comfort had felt less important than the path to enlightenment. Far from resisting the appearance of a cult, the company embraced the label, with its leaders even referring to it that way publicly, Christopher Hubbard, a former website manager for OneTaste, testified. Mr. Hubbard, who said he had joined the company to advocate female sexual empowerment, said he was initially hooked by what appeared to be a 'Buddhist, female empowerment organization.' Over time, he grew disillusioned with what he saw as OneTaste 'trying to force people to do stuff.' It wasn't the nonconformist group he signed up for. 'I thought we were going to make a difference in this country,' Mr. Hubbard said. 'And I wanted to be a part of that.'
The Sun
21-05-2025
- Business
- The Sun
Boss ordered employees to ‘have sex with each other to relieve work tension' in bizarre ritual
BOSSES at an "orgasmic meditation" startup ordered staff to have sex with each other to relieve tension between them, a trial has heard. Witnesses have taken the stand at a New York City court to detail their experiences working at the "cult-like" OneTaste. 3 3 3 Nicole Daedone, 57, the company's founder, and Rachel Cherwitz, 44, former head of sales, are accused of a forced labor scheme alleged to have involved participants in OneTaste courses and employees between 2006 and 2018. They offered sexually focused wellness education that promoted "orgasmic meditation" and advocated female empowerment through orgasm. The defendants deny the charges. Prosecutors claim they coerced people to work without pay and perform sexual acts with OneTaste investors. A former sales employee, referred to only as Max, told the court that Cherwitz attributed a profit drop at the New York City branch to sexual tension between employees. Cherwitz told staff members to have sex during a sales meeting, Max testified. "I want you guys to go have sex right now," she told them, Max testified. Max told the court: "I felt so sick inside. I think that was the moment when I just woke up." The court also heard that employees, many of whom lived together and shared beds, would allegedly be expected to join daily "orgasmic meditation circles". This partnered ritual would involve "methodically stroking a woman's genitals for 15 minutes", according to testimony. Max further testified that employees would be expected to be on call 24 hours a day and were not allowed sick or vacation days. Taking the stand on Tuesday, Dana told the court she was instructed to engage in BDSM with an early OneTaste investor. The witness further testified that her superiors, including Cherwitz, had instructed her to engage in sexual acts with clients of the company. Defense lawyer Julia Gatto said outside court: "The idea that this woman, at this company, engaged in forced labor is as far from the truth and reality as one could comprehend. She further called Daedone "a ceiling-shattering feminist entrepreneur". But prosecutors say Daedone and Cherwitz schemed to draw in people suffering from sexual trauma and make them into unquestioning followers, AP has reported. Company members might be told "to engage in sexual acts they found uncomfortable or repulsive as a requirement to obtain 'freedom' and 'enlightenment' and demonstrate their commitment to OneTaste and Daedone," the indictment claims. OneTaste reportedly started in San Francisco around 2005. Its alleged practices came under scrutiny in a 2018 Bloomberg Businessweek investigation and later in Netflix's Orgasm Inc. The trial is expected to last until mid-June, according to Courthouse News Service.
Daily Mail
21-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Boss at bizarre start-up ordered two workers to have sex to relieve tension between them, court hears
Executives at an 'orgasmic meditation' start-up forced their staff to have sex with each other in an attempt to relieve the tension between them, a federal trial heard. OneTaste founder Nicole Daedone, 57, and former head of sales Rachel Cherwitz, 44, have each been charged with one count of forced labor conspiracy. Witnesses who took the stand at court in New York City this week have detailed their disturbing experiences working for the 'cult-like' San Francisco based company. One former worker, referred to only as 'Max' to protect their identity, told the court that Cherwitz sent two staff members off to have sex during a sales meeting, Courthouse News reports. Cherwitz attributed a profit dip at the firm's NYC branch to an alleged sexual tension between the two employees, Max testified. 'I felt so sick inside. I think that was the moment when I just woke up,' Max told the court, adding that the partner of one of the workers sent off for sex had a breakdown while she waited for the pair to return to the room. Daedone has also been accused of working with OneTaste's former chief technology officer Christopher Hubbard to 'seduce' an early investor, he told the court. The ex-CEO was also accused of encouraging a female employee to 'sexually service' her former boyfriend, the court heard. Both Daedone and Cherwitz face trial this week in New York, accused of a forced labor scheme that allegedly involved participants in OneTaste courses and employees between 2006 and 2018. The pair provided sexually focused wellness education and events that promoted 'orgasmic meditation' and 'slow sex' - advocating female empowerment through orgasm. But prosecutors claim they also exploited some people, by coercing them to work without pay and to perform sexual acts with OneTaste investors using cult-like tactics. Max told the court last week how Cherwitz allegedly ordered two employees to have sex because of their apparent 'tumescence'. 'I want you guys to go have sex right now,' she told the pair, Max testified. Their account echoed that of a woman referred to as 'Becky', who was one of the two employees allegedly sent out of the sales meeting to have sex. Becky told the court that she did not remember specifics about the encounter, but said it was 'awkward' because the man involved was in a relationship with her friend, who had also been present at the meeting. Max also testified that staff were required to be on call 24/7 and were expected to immediately respond to work text messages during their 'waking hours'. They alleged that taking sick or vacation days was prohibited. The witness said that employees in the NYC branch were responsible for cleaning up Daedone's hotel room before and after her stay. Max testified that this included the handling of used condoms in her hotel room. The witness also added that workers had to 'complain to higher-ups' in order to get paid or be put on the company payroll. Many employees lived together and shared beds, the court heard, and were allegedly expected to participate in daily morning 'orgasmic meditation circles'. The meditation activity was partnered and involved 'methodically stroking a woman's genitals for 15 minutes', testimony revealed. Dana, who took the stand on Tuesday, told the court that she was instructed to engage in BDSM activities with early OneTaste investor Reese Jones. The court heard how Dana would allegedly walk Jones around on a leash or whip him with cattails, Courthouse News reports. She also allegedly lived with Jones for roughly three months and would frequently have sex with him, which she claims to have understood as being 'part of the job'. Dana, during cross-examination, testified that she 'liked Jones as a person' but added: 'I wouldn't say I was attracted to him.' The witness added that she had been instructed by higher-ups, including Cherwitz, to engage in sexual acts with the firm's high-paying clients. Although Dana not officially on OneTaste's payroll, she directly worked for Daedone and other leaders, the court heard. She allegedly paid $30,000 for the group's courses, which she claims was funded partly from sex work that a fellow OneTaste community member helped her arrange. OneTaste was featured in the 2022 Netflix 'true crime ' documentary Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste, which featured former worker Ayries Blanck and her journals, which painted a dark picture of the workplace. Five months after it aired, Daedone and Cherwitz were indicted. Both deny the single count of forced labor conspiracy.
