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ENOCH BURKE’S LEGAL troubles continued this week after a judge ordered him back to prison for breaching an injunction to stay away from Wilson’s Hospital School.
But after the latest series of High Court hearings involving his employer, Burke is no longer the only member of his family who is facing possible jail time.
As part of the ruling ordering Burke’s return to prison, High Court judge Brian Cregan also directed the Attorney General to prepare criminal contempt proceedings against the teacher, his mother Martina and his siblings Isaac and Ammi.
The direction follows several ill-tempered interactions between the family and the judge who called their behaviour “the most deliberate, sustained and concerted attack [...] on the authority of the civil courts and the rule of law in this country in recent times”.
It widens the case between Enoch and Wilson’s Hospital School, and may have implications for the Burkes’ ongoing campaign against transgender rights.
The latest ruling is the culmination of almost a year in which the courts have struggled to deal with Burke’s continued defiance of its orders to stay away from Wilson’s Hospital School.
The teacher was released from prison in December last year after spending almost 500 days in jail without purging his contempt.
At the time, a judge ordered that rather than going to prison where he could derive publicity for his cause, Burke should pay a €700 fine every time he trespassed on the grounds of his employer.
When he continued to show up at the school in the spring, the fines were increased to €1,400, then to €2,000, for every occasion he appeared at Wilson’s.
Burke refused to pay the fines, requiring an application by the government to have his bank account emptied and his salary (which he is still being paid during his suspension) redirected as a way of forcing him to do so.
He still owes the State more than €225,000 in fines, an updated figure that was provided to the High Court earlier this year but which is now far higher because of the number of times Burke has appeared at Wilson’s in the intervening period.
At one point during the latest round of hearings, Judge Cregan appeared to show Burke some sympathy by questioning whether the amount of money he now owed was proportionate and suggested reducing it.
It was one of numerous examples of patience with which the judge dealt with Burke and his family in recent weeks, despite growing frustration with their behaviour in his courtroom.
Cregan, who had not previously presided over a case involving the Burkes, first encountered the family on 14 October after Wilson’s made an application for Enoch to be jailed again.
Wilson’s has told the court that not even the hiring of a security guard, partly paid for by the taxpayer via a Department of Education grant, had stopped the teacher from entering its grounds.
When the case first came before Cregan on 14 October, Enoch Burke was not in court because he was at the school; instead, his brother Isaac attempted to represent him and submit a letter on his behalf.
The judge explained that Isaac had not been named as a party in any affidavits submitted to the court, and Enoch had been properly served with details of the case, so Isaac therefore had no right of audience in Court 2.
“I had to remind him again and again that he had no right of audience,” Cregan wrote in his judgment.
“He had no right of audience and he had no right of representation. These rules exist for a reason: to ensure that papers are received in a proper manner only from parties who are represented.”
The issue eventually saw Isaac ejected from the courtroom when the case resumed the following week on 22 October.
Accompanied this time by his father Sean, Isaac again attempted to represent Enoch, who was still at the school, by interrupting proceedings.
Cregan calmly re-iterated that Isaac had no right to an audience, and twice warned him about his conduct before asking gardaí to remove him from the courtroom.
When the hearing resumed, Sean Burke continued where his son had left off and shouted at the judge, who warned him about his conduct twice.
The senior Burke was allowed to leave the hearing voluntarily.
These episodes may have been Cregan’s first dealings with the Burkes, but the Courts Service had shown it was prepared for the family before the first hearing in October.
The family’s previous clearly preceded it in the Four Courts, where there was a visible Garda presence outside Court 2 every time a hearing involving Enoch was listed, whether the Burkes were present or not.
Burke family members had already been removed from courtrooms on multiple occasions, while father Sean Burke faced criminal charges for assaulting a garda in court in 2023.
The weekly order of proceedings also showed how officials sought to avoid the Burkes from disrupting other cases on Cregan’s chancery list.
Although Wilsons’ application was regularly listed somewhere in the middle of the list each week, the judge always dealt with every other case on the list first, presumably to avoid the Burkes delaying other hearings with constant interruptions and filibustering.
But there was only so much preparation that could be done to avoid courtroom chaos.
At a third hearing on 29 October, with schools on mid-term break, Enoch showed up to court alongside his mother Martina, father Sean and siblings Ammi and Isaac.
A dispute over whether the court had received some legal submissions from Enoch ensued.
Barrister Rosemary Mallon, acting for Wilson’s, told the court she mistakenly thought she had not received the submissions, prompting allegations from Enoch, Sean, Martina and Isaac Burke that both she and Judge Cregan were lying.
After being warned to stop interrupting by the judge, Isaac Burke shouted “judge you’re lying, you’re lying” and “I am Dr Isaac Burke and I’ve been listening to lies”.
Cregan ordered his removal from the court, which prompted even more vocal protests from the family: Martina Burke called the situation a “disgrace”, while Isaac told the judge: “God will judge your wickedness”.
“Even outside the court, I could hear the continual noise of shouting and roaring from members of the Burke family,” the judge later said in his ruling.
When the court resumed, Enoch Burke took up his brother’s cause and accused the court of “dishonesty” and lying, including what Cregan described as insults levelled at him in a “threatening, abusive and verbally aggressive manner”.
Although Cregan explained in his judgment that he did not take any personal offence to Enoch’s remarks, he clearly took a dim view of them.
“The insult is to the office I hold and to the administration of justice,” he wrote. “It is, prima facie, contempt in the face of the court.”
He also said that Isaac’s behaviour was, in his view, contempt of court and said the issue would be brought forward at another date in the future.
But neither Cregan nor the Burkes were finished there.
At the next hearing on 5 November, after the judge summarised the case and said he would reserve judgment, Isaac, Martina and Ammi began shouting and interrupting proceedings again.
Cregan ordered Martina Burke to be removed by gardaí after she told him “you are caught, judge, you are caught” and “you shouldn’t be on that chair if you don’t submit to the Appeal Court” (referencing an argument raised by Enoch in a previous hearing that was not deemed relevant to this case).
When the court resumed, Enoch demanded a copy of the judgment and told Cregan to “take that smirk off your face” in a manner the judge later described as “extraordinary” and the behaviour of someone acting “like a petulant child”.
Ammi Burke continued to interrupt before she too was removed from court by gardaí, before Isaac Burke was also removed yet again after shouting “shame on you for your wickedness” at Cregan.
“All of this verbal abuse by Dr Isaac Burke and Mr Enoch Burke was delivered with raised voices and with considerable anger,” the judge later wrote.
“The dry pages of the transcript do not accurately capture the atmosphere of the occasion.”
After the hearing ended, Enoch Burke refused to leave and continued to complain until the judge ordered gardaí to remove him from the court as well.
If the transcripts failed to relay the drama of Court 2 on the day, Cregan’s judgment succeeded in communicating his dismay towards the family.
Invoking contempt of court, he described their behaviour as “disgraceful” and later singled out Enoch for particular criticism as an ”utterly intransigent litigant who is so blinkered in his approach to all issues that he believes that only he is right and that everybody else is wrong”.
“It is not only that Mr Burke has committed a contempt of court; it is also clear that he is contemptuous of all judges and, indeed, of court processes,” the judge said in his ruling this week.
“He has no hesitation in calling his opponents and judges liars at every opportunity. This is not normal behaviour.”
The judge’s direction for the Attorney General to bring criminal contempt charges against the four Burkes opens up a new front in how the legal system deals with their behaviour.
Unlike civil contempt, which is how the courts punish those who disobey court orders – like Enoch Burke when he continued to show up to Wilson’s – criminal contempt is used by their courts to protect their operations.
A person can be found in criminal contempt if, for example, they disrupt court proceedings, if they threaten a judge, or if they publish material that prejudices a trial.
The penalties vary for those who are found to be criminally in contempt of court: a person can be fined, imprisoned or be forced to apologise to the court as punishment.
Given the disdain for which the Burkes have treated the courts system and its orders to date, there could be even more fireworks when the case is brought in the coming months.
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