Sydney writer Lauren Mastrosa faces jail after court rules her toddler-roleplay romance novel "sexually objectifies children" and violates abuse laws.

In a landmark ruling that sends shockwaves through the world of self-publishing and dark romance literature, a Sydney author has been found guilty of producing child abuse material through her written work. Lauren Ashley Mastrosa, a 34-year-old Christian charity executive who writes under the pen name Tori Woods, sat silently in the dock at Blacktown Local Court as Magistrate Bree Chisholm delivered a scathing verdict. The court found that her novel, Daddy’s Little Toy, did not merely push the boundaries of taste but crossed the legal threshold into criminal obscenity.

The Legal Boundary of Fiction

The controversy centers on the novel's depiction of an 18-year-old protagonist, Lucy, who engages in sexual roleplay as a toddler with an older man. While the defense argued that the characters were consenting adults engaged in fantasy, the magistrate rejected this characterization. "The reader is left with a description that creates the visual image in one’s mind of an adult male engaging in sexual activity with a young child," Chisholm stated. The court heard that the book’s cover featured children's alphabet blocks, and the text itself was replete with infantile language used in a sexualized context.

The prosecution’s case rested on the assertion that the material "sexually objectifies children" and invites the reader to imagine prohibited acts. Police testimony revealed that the book contained repeated instances of content that a reasonable person would find undeniably offensive. The conviction on three charges of possessing, disseminating, and producing child abuse material marks a rare instance of a text-only work leading to such serious criminal liability for its author.

• Trigger Warnings vs. Law: Despite the book including a "myriad of trigger warnings" for age gap and "daddy kink," the court ruled these disclaimers did not immunize the content from Australian child protection laws.
• Community Standards: The verdict reinforces a strict interpretation of community standards regarding the sexualization of infantile imagery, even when framed within the context of adult roleplay.

A Precedent for Digital Publishing

The case has ignited a fierce debate about the regulation of online literature and the responsibilities of authors in the digital age. Mastrosa, who published the book via an online pre-release in March, now faces the prospect of a custodial sentence. Her dual life as a charity executive and a writer of taboo erotica has unraveled in the most public manner possible, highlighting the often-hidden corners of the internet's literary subcultures.

As Mastrosa awaits sentencing, the ruling serves as a stark warning to the "dark romance" community: the line between fantasy and illegality is patrolled by real-world laws. The conviction establishes that the written word, when it conjures images of child abuse, carries the same weight as visual material in the eyes of the justice system.