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.