Author of novel depicting toddler role-play spared jail after being convicted of writing child abuse material

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 almost three months after being found guilty of three child abuse material offences relating to the novel. The 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. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email She sat in the public gallery accompanied by her husband, Adam, during the hearing. Earlier on Tuesday, the high-profile criminal barrister Margaret Cunneen SC asked the judge not to convict her client, arguing that 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. …