A HIGH COURT judge has ordered Enoch Burke to return to prison for contempt of court after repeatedly trespassing at Wilson’s Hospital School in Co Westmeath.

In a scathing judgment delivered in the High Court this morning, judge Brian Cregan also directed the Attorney General to prepare criminal contempt proceedings against Burke and his siblings Isaac and Ammi, as well as their mother Martina Burke.

The judge hit out at the family for what he called “the most deliberate, sustained and concerted attack” on the authority of the courts “in this country in recent times”.

He repeatedly criticised Burke and his family for their behaviour towards Wilson’s and in court, after family members repeatedly interrupted hearings in recent weeks.

None of the Burkes were present in court to hear today’s judgment.

The order widens Enoch Burke’s long-running dispute with Wilson’s, which has repeatedly sought to stop the former teacher from turning up at its premises after he was dismissed in 2023.

Burke has been jailed for contempt of court multiple times for breaching an order not to turn up at the school, but was released after he refused to purge his contempt.

In lieu of imprisonment, he has faced ongoing daily fines of more than €2,000 as long as he continues to breach the court’s order, and now owes the State more than €225,000.

‘Grotesque behaviour’

The High Court previously heard that Burke has continued to show up at the school in recent weeks, despite Wilson’s hiring a security guard to keep him away.

The school has had to ask the Department of Education to contribute €4,000 to pay for security, which the court heard was costing €763 a week plus VAT.

Delivering judgment today, Cregan said Enoch Burke had demonstrated “grotesque behaviour ” and that he was someone “who puts the needs of himself above the needs of his pupils”.

He called Burke an “utterly intransigent litigant” who was “so blinkered in his approach to all issues that he believes that only he is right and that everybody else is wrong”.

“He would rather have the school pay money to hire security guards at a rate of €1,000 per week to keep him out of the school rather than that the school would spend €1,000 per week on the needs of the pupils,” the judge said.

Burke has argued his suspension and imprisonment is unlawful and that it has come about as a result of his religious opposition to the extension of transgender rights.

He specifically claims that his entire case is predicated on a direction by the school to call a former student by using the “they” pronoun.

However, Cregan said today that the court order requiring him to stay away from Wilson’s was not about Burke’s beliefs.

He said the former teacher was “perfectly entitled to have and to articulate” his views about transgender people, but that he had been imprisoned and fined because he had breached the court’s order to stay away from the school.

“I am sure that any of the pupils in Wilson’s Hospital, from transition year up, would understand that distinction. It is not difficult to understand,” the judge said. 

He said Burke had engaged in a “mendacious campaign full of misinformation and disinformation” by claiming that he had been jailed because of his opposition to transgender people.

“That is completely false. He has been jailed because he has breached court orders directing him not to trespass on school property,” Cregan said.

The judge also said it was a “blatant” lie from Burke to claim that he has a right to turn up to Wilson’s, and said the former teacher “has no more right to be on the school grounds than he has to rob money from a bank”.

“There is something deeply unsettling about Mr Burke’s presence at the school,” Cregan said.

“He doesn’t just trespass onto 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 and malign presence, an intruder, stalking the school, its teachers and its pupils.”

Given Burke’s behaviour, Cregan said the courts no longer had any option but to jail the teacher again because it served no purpose to continue to issue him with fines that he would not pay.

“It is clear that the imposition of fines on Mr Burke has failed to stop him from breaching the orders of the court,” he said.

He ordered Burke’s immediate committal to prison for contempt of court, for what he described as “repeated and flagrant breaches of the court order”.

‘Concerted campaign’ by Burke family

Cregan was also heavily critical of the Burke family for their behaviour towards both Wilson’s and the court during the latest series of hearings.

During a previous hearing on 5 November, Enoch, Isaac, Ammi and Martina Burke were removed from the court by gardaí.

The judge also threatened to remove Enoch’s father Sean, and criticised his mother Martina for interrupting the court, at another hearing. 

In his judgment, Cregan said he had witnessed “verbal aggression towards this court that was, in my experience, unprecedented” in recent weeks.

He said Enoch Burke’s use of expressions like “wipe that smirk off your face” to a judge of the High Court was “not normal behaviour” and showed that Burke “has an unbridled tongue and clearly has difficulty in regulating his anger”.

“This level of verbal aggression, unregulated anger and lack of self-control, combined with his deliberate strategy of confrontation, make him a potential danger to pupils and teachers of the school,” the judge said.

He said the behaviour of the Burke family went beyond their opposition to transgender people, but were part of a “concerted, organised and systematic” campaign to undermine the proper functioning of the courts.

He described how the courts had to hire gardaí to protect members of the judiciary and registrars from the family and that “verbal abuse and insults” had been directed at the bench.

However, he said the court would “not yield” to the Burke family “because of their invocation of God and scripture”.

“There is a prima facie case that Dr Isaac Burke, Mrs Martina Burke, Ms Ammi Burke, and Mr Enoch Burke, have all committed a form of criminal contempt of court known as contempt in the face of the court,” Cregan said.

He said he would send the matter to the President of the High Court and requested the Attorney General to prepare an application to charge the four members of the Burke family with criminal contempt.