It consists of a set of double-wide trailers within a Scientology compound, joined together to form a suite of offices which were formerly used by the Church's international management team.

After a few managed to escape the Hole and Scientology, they gave accounts of their experiences to the media, the courts and the FBI, leading to widespread publicity about the harsh conditions that they had allegedly endured.

[3] The facility known as the Hole is located on the Church of Scientology's Gold Base, built on the site of a resort called Gilman Hot Springs in the California town of San Jacinto.

[4]: 156  If the ethics codes are violated, a "trial" by a Committee of Evidence can lead to punishments such as assignment to the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF).

Such punishments, which can last for months or years, typically consist of a regime of physical labor and lengthy daily confessions of "evil purposes".

Communications with the outside world are effectively cut off; cellphones and Internet access are generally banned, mail is censored and passports are kept in a locked filing cabinet.

[10] Defectors from Scientology say that from around 2002, Church leader David Miscavige began to publicly slap, kick, punch or shove executives at the base who had angered him.

[11]: 333  John Brousseau, the estate manager at Gold Base and a veteran Sea Org member, said that Miscavige repeatedly faulted his subordinates' work, "constantly berating them, nitpicking everything they're doing, pointing out inadequacies, ineffectiveness, lack of results, blaming it all on them and their inability to do anything right, and on the other hand saying how he's got to do everything himself—he's the only one who can do anything right.

[4]: 186  Scientology spokesmen describe the practice as "a Sea Org ritual akin to traditions in other religious orders" and "part of ecclesiastical justice".

[15] Some Scientology churches (or "orgs") adopted a land-based version of overboarding by making staff members stand against a wall while other Scientologists threw buckets of water at them, but the practice was largely abandoned in the 1970s.

[11]: 93  According to author Janet Reitman, Miscavige reintroduced it in the 2000s and ordered dozens of senior executives to go outdoors in the middle of the night and assemble at the base's swimming pool or its muddy lake.

According to Reitman, in the late fall of 2004 Miscavige called together 70 senior Scientology executives in a pair of double-wide trailers normally used as the international management team's offices.

Those who failed to get a chair when the music stopped would be "offloaded" from the base, away from their spouses and children, to languish in the most remote and unpleasant locations in Scientology's empire.

[11]: 337–338  Scientology's then chief spokesman, Tommy Davis, has acknowledged that the "musical chairs" incident occurred and says that it was "intended to demonstrate how disruptive wholesale changes could be on an organization" but dismisses the accounts of threats and violence.

Hundreds were sent to the RPF while dozens of others were offloaded and expelled from the Sea Org with huge "freeloader bills" presented to them for Scientology services they had received over the years.

"[3] The building was said to be infested with ants and on several occasions the electricity was turned off, causing the temperature inside to reach 106 °F (41 °C) due to the lack of air conditioning.

"[19] The pressure evidently worked, as Rinder wrote an "Apology and Announcement" on June 4, 2005 in which he told Miscavige, "I recognise very clearly how Treasonous I have been towards you and Scientology.

He explained to the Tampa Bay Times why people did not simply walk out of the Hole: "If you leave you are going to lose contact with your family and any friends who are Scientologists.

"[21] From 2006, according to Rinder, executives undergoing "group confessions" were made to stand in big trash cans in the middle of the floor with signs around their necks on which various derogatory statements were written.

Rinder described how it became "relatively routine" for people to be "slapped, punched, kicked, pushed, shoved, thrown up against the wall" in order to make them confess.

[12] He told the Tampa Bay Times that he and other people were made to crawl continuously on rough carpeting around a conference room table with their trouser legs rolled up, getting kicked from behind if they stopped, which resulted in them suffering severely contused and abraded knees after days of such treatment.

[12] He described how Weiland was made to sit under an air vent with the cooling system turned up high, while cold water was poured over his head.

[3] According to Rathbun, who had left Scientology by this time, for twelve hours "Debbie was made to stand in a large garbage can and face one hundred people screaming at her demanding a confession as to her 'homosexual tendencies'.

[24] Cook left the Hole in May 2007 after spending seven weeks there, when she was sent back to Clearwater, Florida, to organize a major public event involving Miscavige.

She spent three weeks under guard, at one point writing in a letter to her mother that if she was not released she "would take whatever steps necessary, like slitting my wrists" before finally signing a severance agreement.

[19] The Times followed up in January 2013 with a detailed account of the Hole, supplemented by interviews with defectors from Scientology,[2] while The Village Voice sought to compile a list of the executives said to have been incarcerated there.

The investigation ground to a halt after a ruling by a U.S. District Court judge in a case concerning Marc and Claire Headley's complaints against Scientology over their treatment at Gold Base.

[27] Scientology acknowledged that the rules under which the Headleys lived included a ban on having children, censored mail, monitored phone calls, needing permission to have Internet access and being disciplined through manual labor.

[28] However, the court found that Scientology enjoyed the protection of the free exercise of religion clause in the First Amendment, and that it could use the "ministerial exemptions" in employment law to deflect litigation over its treatment of its members.

As one attorney has put it, "Here is a court saying, albeit in a civil situation ... that there is nothing improper with this type of conduct and no ill motive can be imbued to the church.