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The current study is an exploratory study examining the relationship between the abuse histories of 89 sexual offenders and the constructs of locus of control, sexual attitudes, general empathy, and denial. Of the 89 offenders, 14.6% were sexually abused, 13.5% physically abused, and 9% both sexually and physically abused, with 61.5% having no abuse history. Analyses indicated that motivation to change was higher for abused versus non‐abused offenders, and that those who were sexually abused had significantly more cognitive distortions about children than those who experienced physical abuse. Although no differences emerged in locus of control scores, our findings indicated that physically abused offenders were more able to take on the perspective of others than those who have not experienced physical abuse. The findings provide several avenues to pursue in examining the longstanding effects of abuse in the thinking and cognitions of sexual offenders.

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.

There are a limited number of risk assessment tools relevant to the internet child abuse material (I/CAM) offender cohort. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new tool, the “Estimated Risk for Internet Child Sexual Offending” (ERICSO). The ERICSO has been developed to assist in the treatment and prevention of sexual crimes against children.

The ERICSO was developed through a multi-stage process including systematic review, survey of professionals and offender case study.

An empirically guided tool for estimating risk for I/CAM offenders, the ERICSO is composed of four domains. The Demographic domain questions provide information about the offender, while Collection domain questions address the content of the offender’s files. The Nature of Engagement domain considers the offender’s interaction with I/CAM, behavioural aspects and contact with children. The Social Aspect domain questions address the offender’s engagement with other I/CAM users. Finally, the assessor may use Structured Professional Judgement to provide additional information, and a summary of the offender’s relevant circumstances and a risk estimation.

The ERICSO provides guidance for the assessment of I/CAM offenders who may reoffend with online child sexual offences, and I/CAM offenders who may reoffend with contact child sexual offences.

Born from a history of generational attitudes towards rehabilitation and risk assessment, the launch of the ERICSO presents an exciting opportunity in the risk estimation of I/CAM offenders.

This study summarises the results of a cognitive‐behavioural treatment group for sexual offenders (n=14) with intellectual limitations in the community.

All participants were convicted sex offenders serving probation orders or prison licences who attended a 14‐month treatment programme designed for sex offenders with intellectual limitations. The programme comprised of five main components: sex education; cognitive distortions; offending cycle; victim empathy; and relapse prevention. All participants completed psychometric measures specifically designed for people with intellectual limitations before and immediately after completing the treatment programme. The four core measures include: Victim Empathy; Sexual Attitudes and Knowledge Assessment (SAK); Questionnaire on Attitudes Consistent with Sexual Offenders (QACSO); and Sex Offences Self‐Appraisal Scale (SOSAS).

Post assessment results reveal significant improvements in sexual offence related attitudes; reductions in attitudes relating to cognitive distortions and pro‐sexual assault beliefs; and significant improvements in victim empathy.

Although none of the participants have been reconvicted for committing new sexual offences during the follow‐up period, given that the follow‐up was restricted to 12 months post‐treatment, it is not possible to conclude this intervention was successful in reducing risk of sexual recidivism.

The results from this study support the use of cognitive‐behavioural approaches in demonstrating positive cognitive shift (reconstructing cognitive distortions and attitudes to victim empathy) for sexual offenders with intellectual limitations.

This review aims to focus on men who access, download, and circulate child abuse images across the internet as the most frequently occurring type of internet sex offender.

Some of the misconceptions associated with this behaviour are outlined and the extent to which internet offenders display some of the criminogenic factors thought to be associated with the multi‐factorial theories of sexual offending are reviewed.

One conclusion from this is paper is the general impression that internet offenders show many of the characteristics of paedophiles. Their theoretical importance is that they appear to be “desisters” from acting out their sexual interest in children by hands‐on offending.

It is argued that there is a need for more research to stimulate our understanding of this type of offender. Furthermore, what of those who both download material and offend directly against children? They present a dilemma for the literature as some research would suggest that they are not entirely like the internet or the contact sexual offenders in their psychological make‐up; they are the group most in need of reappraisal.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the ability of a comprehensive set of covariates to distinguish and predict juvenile sex offenders (JSOs) from non-sexual juvenile offenders (NSJOs) using demographic traits, criminality covariates, childhood trauma, and psychopathologies in a sample of male and female juvenile offenders in the USA.

A multivariate binary logistic regression will be conducted on a total of 64,329 juvenile offenders in Florida to determine what demographic, criminal history, childhood traumas, and psychopathologies make a difference in identifying sexual and NSJOs while controlling for the other key predictors in the model.

Results indicate that having an earlier age of criminal onset and more felony arrests, experiencing sexual abuse or being male, having low empathy, high impulsivity, depression, and psychosis all significantly increase the risk of sexual vs non-sexual offending among the male and female juvenile offenders, even while controlling for all other key covariates in the analysis.

This study uncovered many new findings regarding the key distinguishing traits of juvenile sex offending vs non-sexual offending, using a comprehensive list of predictors, a large sample of male and female offenders, and a rigorous statistical methodology.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dark figure of crime among federal sex offenders from the USA to quantify crime victims and sex crime events among those with no official criminal record.

Using data on 119 offenders selected from a five-year census of sex offenders selected from a federal probation jurisdiction in the Midwestern United States, descriptive, partial correlations, and ROC-AUC models were conducted.

In total, 69 percent of offenders self-reported a contact sexual offense during polygraph examination. In total, 34 offenders had zero official record of sexual abuse but non-zero self-reported history of sexual abuse. These 34 clients offended against 148 victims that potentially denoted a minimum number of 148 sex crime events, a median number of 1,480 sex crime events, a mean number of 32,101 sex crime events, and a maximum number of 827,552 sex crime events. Total paraphilias were not predictive of self-reported sexual offending but were strongly associated with prolific self-reported sexual offending.

The dark figure of sexual offending is enormous and the revelation of this information is facilitated by polygraph examination of federal sex offenders. Ostensibly non-contact sex offenders such as those convicted of possession of child pornography are very likely to have a history of contact sexual offending. Consistent with the containment model, polygraph examinations of the sexual history of offenders convicted of sexual offenses should be required to facilitate public safety.

This paper aims to explore treatment implications of the self‐regulation model (SRM) for sexual offenders with an intellectual disability in an effort to provide practical applications that could be employed in treatment.

The SRM of sexual offending proposes that difficulties in self‐regulation may lead to an increased risk of sexual offending; describing four potential pathways to sexual offending that are based on self‐regulation style and offence‐related goals. Research has focussed on the application and implications of this theoretical model for mainstream sexual offenders. However, more recently, there has been an increasing interest into the application and treatment implications for the SRM for sexual offenders with an intellectual disability. This paper reviews literature on both the SRM and related work on offenders with intellectual disability.

The evidence reviewed supports the notion that the SRM is a valid theoretical model on which to base treatment programmes for people with intellectual disabilities and specific recommendations are made for the design of treatment programmes with this client group.

It is suggested that this model should be used when devising intervention programmes for people with intellectual disabilities in the future.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a broad conceptual framework in the social sciences that have only recently been studied within criminology. The purpose of this paper is to utilize this framework by applying it to one of the most potentially dangerous forensic populations.

Archival data from 225 federal sex offenders was used to perform descriptive, correlational, and negative binomial regression models.

There was substantial evidence of ACEs including father abandonment/neglect (36 percent), physical abuse (nearly 28 percent), verbal/emotional abuse (more than 24 percent), and sexual abuse (approximately 27 percent). The mean age of sexual victimization was 7.6 years with the youngest age of victimization occurring at the age of 3. Offenders averaged nearly five paraphilias, the most common were pedophilia (57 percent), pornography addiction (43 percent), paraphilia not otherwise specified (35 percent), exhibitionism (26 percent), and voyeurism (21 percent). The offenders averaged 4.7 paraphilias and the range was substantial (0 to 19). Negative binomial regression models indicated that sexual sadism was positively and pornography addiction was negatively associated with serious criminal violence. Offenders with early age of arrest onset and more total arrest charges were more likely to perpetrate kidnaping, rape, and murder.

ACEs are common in the life history of federal sex offenders, but have differential associations with the most serious forms of crime.

Although offender profiling has been cited as an effective tool to interview suspects, empirical profiling methods have completely excluded interviewing suggestions when testing the validity of this technique. The purpose of this paper is to explore the utility of empirically derived profiles of offender- and victim-related sexual assault case characteristics (n=624) in the preparation of the interrogation strategies in sexual assault investigations.

Latent class analysis was used to extract profiles of offender- and victim-related sexual assault case characteristics in a sample of 624 incarcerated sex offenders. Moreover, relationships between offender and victim profiles were conducted using χ² analyses.

Findings show that specific offender-victim profiles are related to greater likelihood of confession during the interrogation. Possible interrogation strategies for each profile are suggested and implications for the practice of interviewing suspects are discussed.

The study is the first to examine both victim and offender profiles in order to assess the significant victim-offender profile combinations and their associated probabilities of resulting in confession.