Court fails to uphold parents’ right to protect their child from gender “transition”, demanding they hand over documents for her legal “sex change”.
Continue readingParents ordered by court to hand over legal documents to allow their daughter to “transition,” appeal is pending
Backed by ADF International, parents seek reinstatement of their parental rights and to reunite with daughter, now 16, living in a government shelter since April 2023
Members of the public are invited to support the parents’ legal defence here
GENEVA (11 July 2024) – The teenage daughter of parents residing in Geneva, Switzerland, has been separated from her family for over a year after her parents objected to her gender “transition.”
The case, currently unfolding in Swiss courts, centres on parents who responded to the mental health struggles of their daughter, who expressed “gender confusion,” with care and support, including obtaining mental health care for her.
Concerned that their daughter was being pushed to make hasty and potentially irreversible decisions, they declined “puberty blockers” and explicitly rejected her school’s attempt to “socially transition” her. The school disregarded the parents’ explicit demand.
For seeking to protect the health and wellbeing of their daughter, they now face a legal stand-off over their fundamental rights as parents to care for their child who, residing in a government shelter, is being encouraged to pursue dangerous medical interventions to “transition.”
For safety reasons and to protect their children, the parents are speaking anonymously.
“The story is truly a nightmare. Swiss authorities have taken our child, our daughter, who’s 16 years old."
“My daughter now lives in a government home. Our access to her is regulated by the government.”
The parents added: “I can’t believe we live in a society where your child can be taken away from you simply for trying to protect her.”
“We want our daughter back home. We love her and we miss her,” the girl’s mother pleaded.
Dr. Felix Boellmann, lead lawyer on the case for ADF International said: “Children who experience discomfort with their biological sex deserve to be treated with dignity and need compassionate mental health care, which these parents have gone to great lengths to provide.
“These parents are living every parent’s worst nightmare. Their child has been taken away from them simply for trying to protect her from harm.
“The implications of this are devastating not only for them as a family, but also for all of society. No society can claim to be free if parents can lose their daughter solely for affirming biological reality.”
Parents plea for reunification and reinstatement of their rights
The parents said: “As parents, we would do anything to protect our children from harm. We want the best for our kids.”
“We love them and want to raise them to be honest, kind, and self-confident adults—both our daughter and our son, each in their own way.”
“But right now, our daughter is still a minor, and she rightfully belongs in our home where we can help her navigate through life’s struggles in a way that is best for her long-term health and happiness.”
Commenting on the case, parental rights campaigner Billboard Chris said: “No child has ever been born in the “wrong body”. As parents, we have the duty to guide and protect our children as they navigate puberty – steering them away from harmful ideologies, and empowering them to feel confident in their own skin.
“This chilling case exposes the troubling grip of Western authorities: trampling over the health and wellbeing of a child for the sake of an ideology, and remaining severely out of touch with the leading science – including the evidence brought forward by the recent Cass Report about the harmful impact of puberty blockers on young females. The world should pay attention: the right outcome here is significant in the fight to protect kids everywhere.”
Background and the ideological “gender unicorn”
In 2021, following other mental health concerns, the then 13-year-old told her parents that she felt her “gender identity” was male. This happened following the Covid pandemic, when she had spent a significant amount of time alone in her room and online.
The parents took their daughter to a hospital for help. After a quick 30-minute meeting with doctors, in which she was shown the ideological “gender unicorn” diagram, the doctors said their daughter may be experiencing “gender dysphoria”.
The “gender unicorn” is a controversial diagram based on the false premise that a person’s gender can change and that their gender is based on their feelings and will rather than biological reality.
The doctors told the parents their daughter should take puberty blockers, which the parents declined. They instead chose to obtain private mental health care for her.
“The story is truly a nightmare.”
During this period, the school, against the explicit wishes of the parents, began to “socially transition” the daughter. “Social transition,” as has been shown in the Cass Review, paves the way for irreversible physical interventions, such as the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical mutilation.
The parents shared with the school peer-reviewed medical and scientific literature raising serious concerns about “social transitioning.” They also shared revised government policies from the increasing number of European countries that are moving away from “gender affirmative treatment” due to growing evidence of its harms.
Following the parents’ objections to their daughter’s “transition,” the school liaised with the state child welfare agency, Service de Protection des Mineurs (SPMI).
They convened a meeting with the parents in which the parents were accused of abuse for seeking alternative care for their daughter. The child welfare agency would later tell the parents to “just accept that you have a son.”
The daughter was separated from her parents in April 2023 following a court order placing her in a government-funded youth shelter.
Legal challenge backed by ADF International
The parents are appealing a court order, issued 28 February 2024, to hand over documents, which would allow their daughter to apply for a change of the “legal sex” in the civil register. The demand for the documentation followed the parents’ failed appeal to recover legal authority over the appointment of their daughter’s medical professionals, which had been granted to the child welfare agency by the court.
“Not only have these parents committed no wrong, they absolutely must have their child returned home and are under no obligation to consent to the authority’s demands to allow dangerous medical interventions."
The parents are currently awaiting a decision on their appeal on the matter of the documents.
The parents seek to stop their daughter from “legally transitioning.” This would pave the way for irreversible medical interventions, such as the use of cross-sex hormones and body mutilating surgery, which would have grave consequences for her health and well-being.
Amy Gallagher, the mental health nurse who is suing the UK Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, said:
“This case is terrifying. These parents have had their child taken from them by a State that is captured by gender ideology. I trust in faith and hope that the parents, with support from ADF International, will convince the legal authorities in Switzerland that this is not the path to take and the child is united with her parents swiftly. The Swiss authorities should take in to account the outcomes of the Cass Report and the increasing view that affirmation of transgenderism is dangerous. Hopefully Europe will follow NHS England in asserting the important of an evidence-base for treating children experiencing distress in relation to their biological sex.”
Switzerland in violation of international
Women’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen sees “a global push to destroy families and access our children. The erasure of female language, particularly around motherhood is part of this. Mothers are the protectors of children, fathers are the protectors of families. The state does not know or love our children better than parents.
“Similar stories of state kidnap of children who have parents who recognise the harm of the quasi-religious authoritarian cult of trans have been reported in Canada, USA, Australia and I suspect many have gone unreported elsewhere.
“I have been raising the alarm for some time about this overreach. One must ask who is pushing this and why they might be doing it. Nothing I’ve come up with is anything other than malevolent.
“Parents must not sleepwalk into surrendering our most important duty, protecting our children. Trust your instincts and talk to your children.
“In the UK, many schools refuse to use “son”, “daughter”, “child” or “children”, and prefer to use “your young person”. We must fight this creep of erasing both the relation to our children and the fact they’re children.”
International law holds that a child shall not be separated from her parents against their will, except in cases of abuse.
Dr Boellmann states: “Swiss authorities are in clear violation of international and national law in separating this girl from her parents.
“Not only have these parents committed no wrong, they absolutely must have their child returned home and are under no obligation to consent to the authority’s demands to allow dangerous medical interventions.
“Further, they have the right and the duty to protect their daughter from the harms of this ideology.
“Switzerland must act now to restore this child to her parents and address the egregious overstepping on the part of the school, hospital, and child welfare agency that allowed this nightmare scenario to unfold.”
Steven Edginton, a GB News journalist who has reported on progressive ideology in the UK civil service, including transgender ideology, said:
“It is outrageous that the Swiss government has separated a child and their parents due to them objecting to the child’s wishes to ‘transition’.
“Children with mental health problems deserve love and support from their parents, not ‘affirmation’ from the state confirming their misplaced belief that they can change genders with life-changing puberty blockers and even surgery.
“The parents’ authority must trump the state over their own children, otherwise we live in a very sick society indeed. It is morally abhorrent that the Swiss authorities are attacking parental rights and pushing trans ideology on children.”
“Our daughter was robbed of her childhood, damaged, and disturbed. It is unacceptable that primary school children are being subjected to radically inappropriate content and that protective barriers against abuse are falling."
Making matters worse, the Upper Austrian Directorate of Education failed to respond to the parents’ complaints, once made aware of the situation. The parents’ case is based on the fact that not only were they not informed by the teacher as to the nature of her “courses,” but also they were met with a lack of transparency on the part of the Directorate. The Directorate has discontinued disciplinary proceedings against the teacher, a significant development that the parents discovered only from media reports.
Comprehensive Sexuality Education: A Global Agenda
Felix Böllmann, Director of European Advocacy for ADF International, states: “What happened to these Austrian children demonstrates the catastrophic implications of an agenda that seeks to indoctrinate children outside of the control of their parents.”
The radical indoctrination of children through “sexuality education” curricula is a global problem. The World Health Organization (WHO), UNESCO, and other actors within the United Nations system have dedicated enormous resources to the international promotion of so-called “comprehensive sexuality education” (CSE) to children without parental consent. CSE guidelines are rife with examples of the extreme sexually-explicit, ‘information’ children are to be taught from a very young age under the guise of “empowering” them.
Böllmann continues: “Austria guarantees parental rights, recognising 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 surreptitious 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.”
The ideology behind “comprehensive sexuality education” assumes that children should be sexualised from the first moments of their life. For example, Uwe Sielert, a proponent of extreme sexual pedagogy, worked together with the WHO Regional Office for Europe to develop the “Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe” in 2010. These standards promote an aberrant vision of sexuality education for children, far removed from basic sexual health information, in direct violation of the guaranteed rights of parents to raise and educate their children in line with their own worldview and free from harm. They lay the groundwork for cases such as that of these Austrian children who have been subjected to such content at the hands of their teacher.
“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,” Böllmann says.
Comprehensive Sexuality Education: A Global Agenda
At issue in this case is the compulsory participation of young students in classes containing graphic sexual content in the name of “diversity” education, without the knowledge or consent of their parents, ultimately made possible by European-wide “comprehensive sexuality education” standards.
Students’ testimony details the disturbing content to which they were subjected, including how their teacher made them watch a graphic film and repeatedly described sexual practices in detail with words and pictures, even when the children objected. After the lessons, the children reported being “disturbed” and were visibly unable to process what they were shown and why.
“Our daughter was completely distraught when she came home from class. The content was in no way age-appropriate sex education, but rather deeply ideological content aimed at sexualising our children,” says the mother of one of the students.
ADF International is backing the legal defense of these parents to hold both the school and Austrian authorities accountable for the failure to respect their parental rights.
“ADF International is committed to supporting these parents in the defence of their basic human rights. The school must be held responsible for its duty to uphold the rights of parents to oversee the education of their children. The same applies to the duty of Austrian authorities to abide by the country’s international law commitments on parental rights,” Böllmann concludes.
