An author whose novel described two adults engaging in child role play has avoided jail after a judge ruled some passages amounted to child sex abuse material.
Lauren Mastrosa, who wrote the novel titled Daddy’s Little Toy and recalled it after a brief early release, was sentenced to an 18-month community corrections order in Blacktown Local Court on Tuesday.
She has also been placed on the NSW Child Protection Register for eight years.
The novel reportedly details a consensual relationship between an 18-year-old female protagonist and her father’s 45-year-old friend, the desires he had for her when she was a child, and passages where she role-plays as a toddler.
Mastrosa was charged with produce, possess, and disseminate child abuse material in March last year, later pleading not guilty to three offences.
The 34-year-old from Quakers Hill was found guilty of them in February.
Lauren Mastrosa declined to comment as she left court. (AAP: Dan Himbrechts)
‘Explicit and graphic’ content
Judge Bree Chisholm said Mastrosa set out to deliberately write a novel where the “core purpose” was to fetishise young children so that it could be sold “for a commercial purpose”.
“The character was fictional and, from the beginning of the book, was set out as an 18-year-old woman, but … [she] played a role-playing character that was clearly a very young child,” she said.
“The nature was explicit and graphic.
“The scenario were words, but there were many of them. The descriptions went for chapters.
“It was very sexual, and the child was very young.”
‘Unusual case’
As the judge handed down the sentence, Mastrosa sat motionless at the rear of the courtroom.Â
Clad in all black, she clutched the hand of her husband, casting her eyes mostly downward or closing them altogether for long stretches.
She declined to comment when approached by the ABC.
Judge Chisholm described the case as “unusual”, acknowledging the relevant law had recently been amended by the NSW parliament to broaden the definition of child sex abuse material.
“This is an unusual case… I have very little in case law to guide me,” she said.
Arguments made by representatives of the state and the defence assisted her, she said.
NSW Director of Public Prosecution, Milijana Masanovich, told the court the book was written over months, and the graphic descriptions could “normalise sexual conduct against minors”.
“While the book is a fictional one, the visual the book created in the reader’s mind was in fact a three-year-old child engaging in a sexual activity,” she said.
‘She’s not a paedophile’
Barrister Margaret Cunneen SC, representing Mastrosa, told the court her client did not know she was breaking the law, noting she circulated copies to editors.
“She was planning to write an erotic book, she wasn’t planning to create child abuse material,” she said.
“She’s not a paedophile…There is no child that’s been abused.”
Ms Cunneen said Mastrosa had already been socially punished following the hearings and media coverage, claiming she had received death threats, lost her job and been banned from banking.
She also told the court the writing of the novel was a creative outlet for Mastrosa, who had gone through multiple miscarriages and a thyroid cancer diagnosis.
“She wrote herself to escape psychological distress,” she said.
The defence asked the court to consider not recording a conviction, keeping Mastrosa off the child protection registry, so that she could attend events like school pick-up with her children.
The judge said the court had to send the message that there was no commercial benefit to be made from the fetishisation of children.
“The nature of the material is such that I cannot justify a non-conviction ever being appropriate,” she said.
“[Mastrosa] made a mistake, but we’re all responsible for the mistakes that we make.”