Enoch Burke released from prison for the fifth time

LAST UPDATE | 18 hrs ago

ENOCH BURKE HAS been released from prison for the fifth time after an order from a High Court judge this morning.

His release comes almost six months after he was jailed for breaching a court order not to trespass at Wilson’s Hospital School.

Jude Brian Cregan said Burke would be released on the basis that the school year is finished, and that the former teacher cannot “disrupt” the education of the pupils at the school if he trespasses there at the moment. 

The judge also said that he would make a decision in two weeks time on whether to prohibit Burke’s mother Martina, his sister Ammi and his brother Isaac from attending court in person due to past disruptions. 

Burke has spent more than 700 days in jail for violating a court order to stay away from the school in Co Westmeath since 2022.

He has been imprisoned on five separate occasions for trespassing at the grounds of his former employer, and most recently has been held in Castlerea Prison in Co Roscommon.

The teacher was released today without purging his contempt of court, or giving any undertaking that he would stay away from the school grounds. 

Judge Cregan said today that Burke is “not in prison because of his religious beliefs”, but for turning up “where he is not wanted” and disrupting the education of the children at the school where he was formerly a teacher. 

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The judge said it was “extraordinary” that Burke would turn up “every day” at the school after he’d been dismissed for gross misconduct, and that it was “even more astonishing” that he tried to push past security guards hired by the school to keep him out, and “verbally berated them”. 

The judge further said that Burke’s “refusal to accept reality” is “unprecedented” and that he has been “intent on causing as much disruption as he can”. 

He added that Burke is “entitled” to his beliefs about transgender people, and to “shout them from the rooftops”, but that he cannot do so on the grounds of his former place of employment. 

Judge Cregan said that Burke was defeated in his appeal against the High Court’s decision to restrain him from entering the school’s grounds after he’d been suspended, and had also reached the end of the internal disciplinary procedures related to his dismissal. 

Cregan said that Burke’s characterisation of his arrest as being because the principal of the schools decision to adopt transgender pronouns was not in line with his moral compass is a “legal fantasy which only exists inside Mr Burke’s head”. 

He further said that because Burke is no longer in receipt of a salary from the school, it should be clear to him that this “hopeless fiction is at an end”. 

The judge said that the school’s board of management has made it clear they have no desire to see Burke reside in prison, but that they are wary that he may show up again on the school grounds when the new term begins. 

He said that if this were to be the case, the school could make a fresh application for his committal for being in breach of a court order. 

The reminded Burke that a permanent injunction is in place banning him from entering the grounds of the school. 

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