Background: School promises improvement in 2022  

At a parents’ evening in the fall of 2022, the teacher announced a workshop entitled “The Invisible Garden Fence,” with the stated goal of teaching children to communicate their boundaries. The parents were informed about the content of the workshop but not told that the teacher was planning detailed “sexuality education” lessons containing explicit content.   

In November 2022, the third-grade class was shown graphic photos and taught about sexual practices with explicit detail in class. The youngest children were 8 years old at the time. “The children were visibly disturbed after the lesson, “stated Karina Hochmeir, the mother of one affected child.   

After Mrs. Hochmeir and other parents confronted the school, both the director and the teacher promised it would not happen again.   

One year later: compulsive “sexuality education” lessons  

The same teacher, now in fourth grade, informed the parents that she would like to prepare the children for a workshop with a midwife in December 2023. However, she again failed to inform the parents about the “preparatory lessons” for the workshop, which focused on explicit age-inappropriate content.  

After these lessons, several girls spoke out about the disturbing content to which they were subjected. This included a graphic lesson on contraceptive use in which the teacher told them, you can “have sex with people you don’t like.”  

Memory logs from several children, including Mrs. Hochmeir’s daughter, show that the teacher repeatedly described sexual practices in detail with words and pictures even when the children objected. The children were forced to engage with the lessons by passing around explicit materials, including flavored condoms. After the lesson, the children reported being “disturbed” and were visibly unable to process what they were shown and why.  

Don’t tell your parents 

Neither the teacher nor the school informed the parents that a film screening on sex education was planned for a few weeks later in December 2023.  

Only later it was revealed that alongside an animated clip, the teacher showed a sexually-explicit film in which actors depicted a sex scene. According to Mrs. Hochmeir: “The children were again horrified and shocked.” The teacher rewound the scene multiple times and insisted that the children concentrate on watching the scene repeatedly.   

Some tried to cover their eyes. Two girls subsequently reported that they experienced nightmares of being abused following the film.  

The teacher instructed the children not to talk about the film or the content of their lessons with their parents or anyone else.  

Inappropriate books  

In this context, parents also became aware of some of the inappropriate content their children were being exposed to through the books offered at the school library.  

“Suddenly one child came home with a book from the school library that actually states that sex is something for children. Under the subtitle ‘What is sex?’ the first sentence reads: ‘Sex is for everyone, big or small, fat or skinny, and also for young ones like you!’ And we’re talking about elementary school kids here,” said Dr. Michaela Vamos-Karandish, another mother that is standing up in defence of her child at the Rutzenmoos school.  

“When parents send their kids to school, they should be able to feel good about that. In this case, the sex education lessons were obviously not coordinated with the parents,” stated Ombudswoman Elisabeth Schwetz who is supporting the parents in demanding age-appropriate sex education for their children.  

Dismissing serious concerns 

Despite all of these incidents, the School Directorate failed to adequately engage with the parents’ concerns. At first, the School Directorate dismissed the allegations brought forward by the parents without even contacting them. The parents only found out that their concerns had been dismissed through a newspaper article. They subsequently met with School Directorate officials only to have their concerns dismissed yet again with a generic statement stating that the content of the material and conduct of the teacher were in line with the curriculum. The parents were then obliged to turn to the Austrian Ombudsman to request that the disciplinary inquiry that had found no fault with the content or teacher be revised.  

The global promotion of radical “sexuality” education for children  

The radical indoctrination of children through “sexuality education” curricula is a global problem. The World Health Organization, UNESCO, and other actors within the United Nations system have dedicated enormous resources to the international promotion of so-called “comprehensive sexuality education” to children without parental consent. CSE guidelines are rife with examples of the extreme, sexually-explicit “information,” children are to be taught under the guise of “empowering” them.   

The ideology behind “comprehensive sexuality education” assumes that children are sexual beings from the first moments of their life. For example, Uwe Sielert, a proponent of extreme sexual pedagogy, worked with the WHO Regional Office for Europe to develop the 2010 “Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe.” These standards promote an aberrant vision of sexuality education for children, far removed from basic sexual health information, in direct violation of the rights of parents. Further, they lay the groundwork for cases such as that of these Austrian children who have been subjected to abusive content at the hands of their teacher.  

“Catastrophic implications of an agenda” 

“Parents have a great responsibility to protect their children from harm, but they can’t do that if they don’t know what is happening behind classroom doors. And children have the right to be protected from harm. Exposing children to radical ‘sexuality education’ thus violates the rights of both children and their parents.  

What happened to these Austria children demonstrates the catastrophic implications of an agenda that seeks to indoctrinate children outside of the control of their parents.  

Austria guarantees parental rights, recognizing that parents are best positioned to protect their children, and these rights are likewise enshrined in international law.  

Parents should not have to fear the worst when they send their children off to school. No parent should have to worry that their child will be subjected to deeply problematic images and “information” at the hands of their teacher.   

That is why we are pushing back against the secret importation of this radical and explicit content–in this school, for the benefit of these students and their parents. But also for other children and parents who may not yet be aware of the materials being used in schools across Europe,” commented Dr. Felix Böllmann, Director of European Advocacy at ADF International.