A taboo book written by a Christian charity marketing executive contained references to "sexual stuff" with a young child, the police officer tasked with reading the novel has said.
Lauren Ashley Mastrosa, 34, is fighting child abuse charges brought over the book Daddy's Little Toy which she wrote under the pen name Tori Woods.
The Sydney woman issued a pre-release of the novel to 21 advance readers in March before a complaint about its content was made to NSW Police.
The book was about an 18-year-old woman named Lucy who worked in a toy store and who role-played as a child with an older man, Blacktown Local Court was told during a hearing on Thursday.
Mastrosa is fighting allegations that she possessed, disseminated or produced child abuse material.
On Thursday, her barrister Margaret Cunneen SC questioned police suggestions that the novel contained child abuse material at all.
Senior Constable Liam Matson was tasked with reading the entire novel.
He testified that it contained parts depicting offensive content with someone implied to be a child.
Cunneen said the character Lucy – who worked in a toy store and who wore children's clothing – was aged 18 throughout the novel.
Even if she spoke like a child during sex as a consenting adult, that was role play which was legal, she put to the officer.
"Do you know anything about the area of sexual fantasy which is called daddy dom little girl?" she asked
"I have done some light reading," he replied.
Matson disagreed Lucy was always aged 18 throughout the novel, pointing to a section early on in the book written from the perspective of a man named Arthur.
Arthur wanted a woman as sweet and as nice as Lucy was when she was a three-year-old, he said.
"It sounds like he wants a three-year-old to me," the officer said.
"There is sexual stuff in the book that starts when she is three."
Mastrosa was seen sitting beside her husband shaking her head in court as Matson argued the book portrayed Lucy at different ages.
The officer also said a part where the fictional toy store worker was being spanked was an example of assault.
He conceded any references to sexual intercourse or touching only took place in sections of Daddy's Little Toy where the main character was 18.
He also said police received no formal training in classifying child abuse material in line with commonwealth legislation.
In a recorded interview to police played to the court, Mastrosa rejected claims her book contained any child abuse material.
"Hell no, that's not it," she told officers.
She said she had completely shut down any further publication of the novel.
"This is not something that I want out there if it is incriminating unintentionally," she told police.
Only 21 people had received digital copies of the book and no physical copies had been posted, she said.
Magistrate Bree Chisholm heard that police officers had not read the novel when they arrested Mastrosa.
Instead, they had acted on a Crime Stoppers report by someone who themselves had not read the entire book.
Cunneen said her client had no criminal history when she was arrested.
Police had been unable to find a skerrick of child abuse material other than that allegedly contained within the novel on the mobile phones and laptops seized during a search of Mastrosa's Quakers Hill home, she said.
The hearing continues.
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