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Purpose – This chapter explores claims of social problem workers in criminal justice and mental health with regard to how to manage males who are identified as or self-identify as both victims and perpetrators (V/Ps) of sexual abuse. We also examine the claims of V/Ps with regard to how they manage their dual status.

Methodology – This chapter is based on an action research project on intervention services for V/Ps in Ontario, Canada. Our data include literature reviews, interviews with intervention professionals, V/P narratives, and a transcription of a stake-holder's workshop.

Findings – Intervention workers whose mandate is offender risk management state they give little attention to victimization-related issues of V/Ps, whereas workers in victims’ services often state that adult V/Ps are not covered under their mandate. This suggests that the status of offender is the master status for adult V/Ps. Our V/P narratives recount efforts at self-management and some V/Ps and intervention professionals have expressed interest in the possibility of developing programs specially designed for V/Ps.

Practical Implications – An examination of issues related to the dual status of sexual abuse V/Ps suggests that V/Ps may require special services that cannot be provided by existing programs for perpetrators and victims.

Originality/Value of Paper – Studies of social problem work might benefit from considering not only professionals’ viewpoints but also those of their clients. This chapter explores new intervention models (GLM and RJ) that incorporate ethical concerns based on a rights perspective (“moral repair”) and the experiential concerns of V/Ps.

This chapter documents how the shift in psychiatric representation from the “morally insane” perpetrator of the 19th century to the modern psychopath or person with anti-social personality disorder involves a recasting of the offender from someone afflicted with an illness whose criminal misconduct is merely a symptom of their disorder to someone whose criminal misconduct is perceived as an expression of their true character. Drawing upon recent case law, the article then shows how prosecutors deploy this modern psychiatric reconfiguring during the penalty phase of the US capital trial to persuade jurors to decide in favor of death over life without parole. Central to the building of this narrative is the reframing of the offenders’ silences as well as what are taken as their unconvincing attempts to show remorse as evidence of a pathology whose primary manifestation is the incapacity to feel or experience moral emotions. Applying but also modifying Harold Garfinkel's work on degradation ceremonies, the chapter shows how the pathologizing of the offender's lack of remorse involves a rite of passage in which he or she is symbolically demoted from someone worthy of life in spite of their grievous crime to someone for whom death is the only appropriate penalty.