Criminalising fictional child abuse material : where do we draw the line?

This article is concerned with the criminalisation of purely and obviously fictional material, such as comics and narratives, depicting or describing characters who appear to be children in a sexual context. There are legitimate concerns about the spread of material that glorifies child sexual abuse, regardless of whether it represents real or fictional children, which justifies prohibiting its dissemination. However, by drawing upon jurisdictions" Canada and the United States" this article highlights that the criminalisation of simple possession of self-created works of the imagination kept privately in Australia goes beyond what is justified in preventing a risk of harm to real children.