Ex-charity staffer spared jail over child abuse fiction
Miklos Bolza |
The author behind an offensive novel depicting toddler role-play has been convicted but spared jail for penning child abuse material.
Lauren Ashley Mastrosa, a 34-year-old former marketing executive for a Christian charity, wrote Daddy’s Little Toy under the pen name Tori Woods and published it through an online pre-release in March 2025.
The book – which was read by a handful of advance readers – is about an 18-year-old woman named Lucy who role-plays as a toddler with Arthur, an older man who is her father’s best friend.
Mastrosa appeared for sentence at Blacktown Local Court in western Sydney over two months after being found guilty of three child abuse material offences relating to the novel.
Judge Bree Chisholm convicted the 34-year-old and imposed an 18-month community corrections order.
“General deterrence looms large and the sexual exploitation of children even from such an unsuspecting defendant cannot be minimised,” she said.
Mastrosa gasped as the sentence was handed down.
She wore black and sat in the public gallery accompanied by her husband Adam during the hearing.
Earlier on Tuesday, high-profile criminal barrister Margaret Cunneen SC asked the judge not to convict her client, arguing she had simply made a mistake.
“She was planning to write an erotic book, she wasn’t planning to write child abuse material,” she told the court.
There was no ongoing risk to the community as the books, which were about fictional characters, had been destroyed, Ms Cuneen said.
“She’s not a pedophile, she’s someone who wrote a book which offended against the law.”
Mastrosa wrote the book as an escape after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer and having multiple miscarriages, the court heard.
The 34-year-old lost her job as a marketing executive for Christian charity BaptistCare, had been exposed to online death threats and vitriol, and would never write anything like the book again, Ms Cuneen said.
Mastrosa was willing to undergo ongoing psychological treatment after being diagnosed with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder since her arrest, the barrister added.
Crown prosecutor Milijana Masanovic pushed for a conviction.
“The book speaks for itself. The matter’s an objectively serious one,” she submitted.
The novel normalised child abuse material and fuelled the market of child exploitation, Ms Masanovic said.
She acknowledged character references shown to the court that described Mastrosa as a kind, charitable woman.
“Sometimes good people can do bad things,” she said.
In February, Judge Chisholm found that the book sexually objectified children.
“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,” she ruled at the time.
Mastrosa was found guilty of producing, possessing and distributing child abuse material.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
AAP