Evangelical Christian educator, Enoch Burke, has once again been incarcerated due to his refusal to adhere to a court order which forbids him from being in the vicinity of Wilson’s Hospital School in Westmeath County.
Mr Burke was remanded to Mountjoy Prison by Justice Michael Quinn in a recess hearing at the High Court on Monday for going against the terms of an injunction granted by Justice Alexander Owens in the previous year.
The order was never opposed and continues to be effective, as confirmed by the judge.
Justice Quinn mentioned that “compelling evidence was presented to the court”, which Mr Burke did not contest, showing his violation of the injunction’s conditions. It was stated that Mr Burke had been to the school numerous times from August 22nd onwards.
Given the continued defiance shown by the teacher, Justice Quinn resolved that Mr Burke should be confined to Mountjoy Prison, with a case review scheduled for October 11th.
Mr Burke has the opportunity to purge his contempt and orchestrate his jail release anytime before the court reviews the case, the judge added.
The ruling took into consideration evidence given by the school’s acting principal, John Galligan and the board of management’s chairman, John Rogers. They testified that Mr Burke’s constant and noticeable presence at the school disrupted the staff’s daily tasks.
Mr Burke was taken to court on Monday evening following his arrest at the school in the afternoon.
Mr Burke, flanked by family members including his parents, Martina and Sean Burke, claimed he was being imprisoned by the court system for his refusal to acknowledge a “heinous transgender ideology”.
During his plea, Mr Burke acknowledged the judge’s decision to send him back to jail.
He protested that his rights as a Christian were being violated by the institution when he was instructed to refer to a male student as ‘they’.
Drawing upon the teachings of Genesis and St Matthew to reinforce his stance on gender as a Christian, the educator countered the court case as ‘a travesty of justice,’ attributing deceitfulness concerning the case’s true nature to multiple parties, judiciary members included. His belief is that the truth of the matter, centred around his refusal to accept transgenderism, is being suppressed, though he emphatically stated it would eventually resurface.
Following the judge’s order that Mr Burke be remanded in custody, the educator held the view that he would ultimately be accountable to a higher authority – God. During the proceedings, Mr Burke’s kin, similarly critical of Mr Justice Quinn, implored the judge to evaluate an August 2022 report by the school’s past principal, Ms Niamh McShane, arguing it provided clarity on the nature of the case.
However, the judge acknowledged that this report had been reviewed in previous hearings, reminding Mr Burke that the current matter of concern was whether Mr Justice Owen’s order had been violated by the educator. Late in the previous month, the school board sought a court order for the educator’s detainment and conveyance to prison due to Mr Burke’s alleged continuous defiance of High Court orders prohibiting his presence at the school.
According to the school, this educator was present every day at Wilson’s Hospital school since the previous August 22nd, which they believed disrupted staff and students. The board’s representative, Rosemary Mallon BL, voiced in court that their increasing worry stemmed from recent perceived violations of an injunction preventing his intrusion at the site.
Mallon stated that her client had no intention of perpetuating the legal dispute with Mr Burke but feared that without his incarceration, he would persist in his attendance at the school. Regardless of earlier imprisonment terms and fines, it was stressed by the school that Mr Burke displayed a lack of intention to adhere to the injunction.
The school expressed further distress over a reported incident where Mr Burke allegedly intruded upon a staff meeting within the school’s primary building. Additionally, it was voiced by the counsel that third parties, suspected to be supporters of Mr Burke and not members of the press, had begun to make appearances at the school.
In late June, a history and German educator was freed from Mountjoy Prison, where he had served more than 400 days in two separate sentences, without absolving his disrespect for the court. Yet, Mr Justice Mark Sanfey cautioned him that the judicature wouldn’t think twice before re-imprisoning Mr Burke if he once more violated the orders of the court.
Mr Burke has been embroiled in an unending legal argument with Wilson’s Hospital, due to his refusal in 2022 to heed the school’s instruction to address a particular student by another name and to employ “they” as the student’s pronoun.
From September until December 2022, during his inaugural prison term, he spent over a hundred days in Mountjoy Prison. Following the festive season, he resumed his visits to the school, resulting in the High Court slapping him with a daily penalty of €700.
However, with the kick-off of the 2023/24 academic year and given Mr Justice Owens’s ruling, Mr Burke’s refusal to halt his school visits led to another imprisonment for contempt.