{"id":159305,"date":"2025-11-25T19:08:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/159305\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T19:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:08:07","slug":"enoch-burke-returned-to-prison-after-being-arrested-close-to-wilsons-hospital-school-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/159305\/","title":{"rendered":"Enoch Burke returned to prison after being arrested close to Wilson\u2019s Hospital School \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Schoolteacher Enoch Burke<\/a> has been returned to Mountjoy Prison a week after a High Court judge ordered his committal for contempt of court. <\/p>\n

The Irish Times understands he was taken into custody in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, on Tuesday afternoon, close to Wilson\u2019s Hospital School in Multyfarnham.<\/p>\n

Garda Headquarters on Tuesday evening said it did not comment on \u201cnamed entities\u201d but confirmed garda\u00ed executed a High Court order in Co Westmeath earlier in the day.<\/p>\n

Though he was wanted by the Garda for committal to the Dublin prison on foot of the High Court order, Mr Burke last week returned to Wilson\u2019s Hospital School.<\/p>\n

In a video posted last Thursday, Mr Burke discussed the school, the High Court and the mainstream churches, whom he accused of promoting an LGBTQ+ agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have served God and this school with a good conscience for the last seven years,\u201d he said, adding the High Court was now sending him to prison \u201cfor the fourth time\u201d. <\/p>\n

As part of his long-running dispute with the courts \u2013 which began over losing his teaching post at Wilson\u2019s Hospital School \u2013 he has already spent more than 500 days in prison at different intervals over the last three years.<\/p>\n

He has been committed to prison for his continuing contempt by turning up at the school regularly in breach of court orders. Mr Burke remains on the payroll at the school as he challenges his dismissal. <\/p>\n

He claims his actions are the result of a school directive that he use a new name for a transgender pupil and use the they\/them pronoun. He says this is a breach of his constitutional rights, including his right to freedom of religion\/conscience.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, November 18th, the High Court ordered the immediate reimprisonment of Mr Burke after Mr Justice Brian Cregan said it served no useful purpose to impose further fines on him, because he had continued to breach the court orders and had not voluntarily paid a euro towards the fines.<\/p>\n

Despite being repeatedly jailed for contempt and repeatedly being given his liberty by the courts, Mr Burke had repeatedly abused that freedom by trespassing again, the judge said. A security guard has been employed daily to prevent Mr Burke from gaining access to the premises.<\/p>\n

A \u20ac1,400 daily fine that the court has imposed on him for attending the school now amounts to more than \u20ac225,000. However, Mr Burke has continued to turn up at the school, insisting that he still works there and will not be removed for what he describes as his refusal to accept \u201ctransgender ideology\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Schoolteacher Enoch Burke has been returned to Mountjoy Prison a week after a High Court judge ordered his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45,615,43693,73,61,60,89406,43,59],"class_list":{"0":"post-159305","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-an-garda-siochana","9":"tag-dublin","10":"tag-enoch-burke","11":"tag-high-court","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-mountjoy-prison","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-westmeath"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}