NYC judge tosses suit accusing secret ‘cult’ of using women as unpaid servants

New York Post/October 5, 2022

By Priscilla DeGregory

A judge tossed a lawsuit this week that alleged a secret Manhattan cult duped two women into becoming unpaid servants.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lori Sattler found that Stephanie Rosenberg and Marjorie Hochman’s lawsuit against The Odyssey Study Group – or OSG – showed they worked for the alleged cult.

But the women didn’t sufficiently prove that “they expected compensation from [OSG] at any time during their membership,” according to Sattler’s decision on Tuesday.

The two women filed suit in 2021 claiming that the group – run by one-time actress Sharon Gans Horn who had a small role in “Slaughterhouse-Five” – signed them up as members in 2005 promising to “help improve their lives economically, physically and spiritually,” the court papers alleged.

But instead, the duo had to pay a hefty $400 in monthly dues and were forced to work as cooks, cleaners, and recruiters without pay, the suit claimed.

Meanwhile, Horn and other leaders in the cult were made “very rich” by “lying to its members that it was an honor, privilege and a step to self-improvement to serve the leaders of OSG,” the suit claimed.

The women also accused OSG of systematic physical and mental abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, private adoptions, arranged marriages and financial crimes,” the suit alleged.

The pair were afraid if they left OSG they would be ostracized from the community that had become their “entire world,” the filing claimed.

Rosenberg left OSG in 2019 and Hochman left in 2016, the suit claimed.

Gans died from COVID complications in January 2021 but the group is still thriving and meeting twice a week at an office on West 38th Street, a former OSG expert told The Post in July.

The group is even expanding having bought a $925,000 100-acre compound in the Catskills.

Lawyers on both sides didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.

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