Fact check: Enoch Burke sent to prison for refusing to comply with court order

Online posters have claimed that Enoch Burke has been arrested and jailed for refusing to use a transgender pupil’s preferred pronouns.

One person wrote: “Irish Christian teacher arrested for refusing to endorse and affirm transgender ideology.”

Another, who is a German Member of the European Parliament, said: “In Ireland, a teacher is being jailed for the third time because he refused to address a #Transgender student with the pronoun “they.” Madness in the #EU, the sick work of gender ideologues trying to abolish biology!”

Evaluation

The teacher – Enoch Burke – has been repeatedly sent to prison for failing to comply with a restraining order which banned him from entering the school at which he had previously worked.

He had been suspended – and later dismissed – from the school. The suspension followed his disruptive behaviour after being asked to refer to a pupil as “they”.

The facts

The school

Enoch Burke was suspended as a teacher of history and German at Wilson’s Hospital School in Co Westmeath in August 2022.

After being asked by the school principal to refer to one pupil as “they”, Mr Burke interrupted a staff meeting “in an agitated manner” to speak about the request – which he objected to – and later interrupted a religious service.

He also twice interrupted the principal when she was speaking to guests of the school and “interacted with her in a manner which she and others who were present considered inappropriate”, according to a court document.

Mr Burke was suspended with pay by the school’s board and dismissed in January 2023, a decision which he appealed against.

The courts

Mr Burke was ordered to stay away from the school premises by a judge in August 2022 and in a second ruling in September that year.

He was jailed in September 2022 for failing to comply with the first order.

A ruling on his continued imprisonment in December that year stated that Mr Burke “has consistently refused to agree to stay away from the school.”

As part of the ruling it was ordered he be released from prison. The judge thought Mr Burke was “exploiting his imprisonment for his own ends” and he had become a “household name”.

That ruling was clear that the prison sentence was not made because he refused to use the child’s preferred pronouns, but rather over his repeated attempts to go to the school: “Mr Burke asserts that his religious beliefs prevent him from describing transgender people as ‘they’, and projects his imprisonment as some sort of punishment visited upon him because he has stood up for these beliefs.

“He is incorrect in this as his jailing was brought about by his own decision to attend the school when he knew that he had been ordered not to do so.”

Shortly after his release, on January 5th and 6th, 2023, Mr Burke again attended the school, in defiance of a court order. A new court order issued that month said he should be fined €700 for every day that passed until he started to comply.

On July 19th, 2023, Mr Burke was banned “from entering or trespassing on premises” at the school without permission but again he did not comply.

In September 2023, he was jailed for a second time “until he purges his contempt” of the court order.

Between then and June 2024 there were six subsequent occasions when Mr Burke was given the opportunity to say he would comply with the court order. He “declined to give the undertakings sought”.

He was released from prison on June 28th, 2024.

The following month, a judge said of the restraining order: “It is for repeated breach of this order, and for no other reason, that Mr Burke has been imprisoned.”

The court added: “It is not open to Mr Burke to conclude unilaterally that the order of the court breaches his constitutional rights and is thus “void ab initio” (void from the beginning), such that he does not have to comply with it.”

On September 2nd, 2024, Mr Burke attended Wilson’s Hospital School and was arrested by gardaí, a video released by his family to the media showed.

Following a High Court hearing, he was sent to prison for a third time, media reports showed.