‘I acted to protect my child’: Austrian mom fined for keeping son from explicit sex ed workshop
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Christian legal firm ADF International warns the case reflects a growing pattern of schools sidelining parental rights on sexual content, with children reportedly left emotionally distressed.
(LifeSiteNews) — A mother in Austria has been fined for temporarily keeping her 10-year-old son out of school during a sexual education class.
Michaela Vamos-Karandish was fined 110 euros ($128) for keeping her young son out of school for four days in March 2025 after an external sex education workshop was to take place. The workshop’s content had not been disclosed to parents beforehand. In addition, numerous sex education books – the content of which some parents found questionable – were made available in the classroom for unsupervised use by students.
According to a report by ADF International, the materials included books such as Lina, the Explorer and My First Sex Education Book, which contain explicit depictions of sexual practices.
Some of the books also depicted modern views on gender and family, incompatible with nature and traditional teaching. The mother argued that these violated the principle of neutrality in public schools. In a book made available to elementary school students in the village of Rutzenmoos, the first sentence under the subtitle “What is Sex?” reads: “Sex is for everyone, whether big or small, fat or thin, and even for young people like you!”
A total of 17 different books were displayed in the classroom over a two-week period and made accessible to students without educational supervision.
In her appeal, Vamos-Karandish explains that she had already contacted both the school and the responsible education authority multiple times, both in writing and verbally, requesting an alternative to the disturbing sex ed classes.
The mother also criticized the school, which is located in the political district of Vöcklabruck in Upper Austria, for its approach to dealing with the parents when it came to their children’s sex education.
Parents were informed that if they did not consent to the external organization doing the sex ed classes, they would not be told when and how the content would be taught instead. This, she argued, made it significantly more difficult to make a free and informed decision about the matter.