NEW: Family Sentenced To Prison For Homeschooling Their Kids

A Brazilian couple has been sentenced to 50 days in prison after homeschooling their two daughters, in a case that has ignited a fight over parental rights, state power and ideological control in education.

Audato and Ieda Denardi were convicted of “intellectual neglect” after a São Paulo criminal court ruled they educated their daughters at home without following a state-approved curriculum.

The girls are 15 and 11.

According to Alliance Defending Freedom International, which is providing legal support to the family, the court faulted the parents for failing to include programs on “gender and sex education” and “tolerance and diversity” in their daughters’ education.

The court also claimed the parents failed to properly integrate the girls into Brazilian culture, citing their preference for religious and classical music over popular trap or “sertanejo” music.

Isabel Monteiro, the family’s defense attorney, said the judge made an “ideological decision to convict them” based largely on the older daughter’s preference for sacred music instead of mainstream music that often contains explicit lyrics.

The Denardis were sentenced by a lower court in April.

They remain free while appealing what is believed to be the first criminal prosecution of its kind in Brazil.

🚨 Parents sent to prison for homeschooling!

A Brazilian court sentenced two parents to prison after they homeschooled their children and refused to teach the government’s mandated “gender and sex education” curriculum. @Lauren_Gideon from @ClassicalConv breaks it down. 👇 pic.twitter.com/p2loYWmz3t

— Alex Newman (@ALEXNEWMAN_JOU) July 7, 2026

The couple told Fox News Digital they began homeschooling in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic after concluding their daughters’ schools were not giving them a proper education.

Ieda said the girls thrived at home, so the family continued homeschooling.

After the Denardis officially withdrew their daughters from school in 2022, state officials began making home visits and pressuring them to re-enroll the girls.

The couple said they were stunned by the prison sentence and never expected to face jail for trying to give their daughters a better education.

The girls are both accomplished pianists and speak multiple languages, according to the family.

Even state prosecutors urged the court to acquit the parents.

After an independent educational psychologist evaluated the children, prosecutors concluded the girls showed no signs of neglect and were thriving socially and academically.

The Denardi family Screenshot. (Alliance Defending Freedom International)

Monteiro said the family provided more than 3,000 pages of evidence showing they had not intellectually abandoned their children.

But the judge rejected the prosecution’s recommendation.

According to ADF International, the judge accused the parents of “using their daughters as pawns in an ideological struggle, subjecting them to a form of unregulated education, the effectiveness and quality of which lack adequate metrics within the Brazilian legal system, while completely excluding the State’s involvement.”

The sentence has placed an enormous emotional burden on the family, Audato Denardi said.

“It has affected a lot… Now we have to sleep and wake up every day thinking about that we can go to prison,” he told Fox News Digital, noting that a 50-day sentence would force them away from their jobs and their city.

Audato said the family’s greatest fear is what would happen to the children if both parents are jailed.

“That is our biggest problem in all this stuff, because we’re going to have to stay 50 days without them and who’s going to stay with them?” he said.

The case exposes the legal limbo surrounding homeschooling in Brazil.

In 2019, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that homeschooling was not unconstitutional but said it needed to be regulated by lawmakers.

The House of Representatives passed a regulatory framework bill in 2022, but it stalled in the Senate.

That has left homeschooling families stuck between a court ruling that did not ban the practice outright and a legislature that has failed to create clear rules.

The Denardi family’s appeal will be heard by the 7th Criminal Chamber of the Court of Justice of the State of São Paulo, ADF International said.

“We are waiting for real justice and the court to give us this acquittal that we think we deserve because the state can’t change law [based on] ideology,” Audato said.

POLL: Will You Support Trump And His Candidates In The Midterms?