A High Court judge has comprehensively rejected claims by jailed schoolteacher Enoch Burke that there were errors in an earlier judgment jailing him over his repeated trespass at Wilson’s Hospital School in Co Westmeath.
Members of Mr Burke’s family – his mother Martina and siblings Ammi and Isaac – were physically removed by gardaí from the court today when Mr Justice Brian Cregan told them they could not be present due to their repeated disruptive behaviour at past hearings.
Mr Justice Cregan then rose to give the gardaí an opportunity to remove them without further disruption to the court.
The trio had arrived earlier and sat in the front bench, usually reserved for senior barristers, while Enoch Burke joined the hearing via videolink from Mountjoy.
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Isaac was removed from his seat by a garda while Martina and Ammi continued to stay sitting. Despite repeated requests by a garda sergeant to leave, they refused, saying that they had a constitutional right to be in the courtroom.
Mr Burke remained online even after the judge had given his judgment but interrupted again when the court resumed to continue other business. The judge ordered that Mr Burke’s microphone should be muted and at that stage Mr Burke picked up his belongings and left the screen.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Cregan said Mr Burke is in prison because he has breached a court order not to trespass on school property. “He is not in prison because of his views on transgenderism which he is fully entitled to have,” the judge said.
He would be released if he purged his contempt, he said, and must give an undertaking to the court not to trespass again, although the issue of the outstanding €225,000-plus fines remains outstanding.
The idea he is in prison because of his religious beliefs is nonsense and the court does not imprison people for their religious beliefs, he said. He is in prison for trespassing: “No more. No less.”
Statements by him and his family that he is in prison because of his opposition to transgenderism “are lies”, he said.
The judge was satisfied there were no errors in his judgment including his use of the words “baleful” about him and “malign”. He also rejected Mr Burke’s complaint about the use of the word “roaming” and “stalking” around the school.
In his earlier judgment, the judge said: “There is something deeply unsettling about Mr Burke’s presence at the school.
“He doesn’t just trespass on to the school grounds, he goes right into the heart of the school, roaming around its corridors when he has no right to do so.
“He is a baleful malign presence, an intruder, stalking the school, its teachers and pupils.
“But this is a deliberate strategy: a strategy of confrontation. Confront the principal, confront the bishop, confront the school, confront the security guards; confront the courts.”
His verbal aggression was one of the reasons for his dismissal, he said. “His verbal aggression towards this court was, in my experience, unprecedented.”
The judge adjourned the case again to next Wednesday.
