Jailed teacher Enoch Burke has lost a defamation action against the publishers of the Sunday Independent over an article which wrongly stated he was in danger of being beaten while in prison and had to be moved because he was repeatedly expressing his religious beliefs.
In a judgment issued this morning, Mr Justice Rory Mulcahy said while the contents of the article were untrue, they did not injure his reputation.
Mr Burke took the defamation action against Mediahuis Ireland, publishers of the Sunday Independent over an article published on 9 October 2022 during his first period in jail for contempt of court.
The publisher denied defamation and pleaded fair and reasonable publication on a matter of public interest.
Judge Mulcahy said the seven paragraphs of the article about which Mr Burke had complained were untrue. He said this was "unfortunate" but the law on defamation did not provide a remedy simply because an untrue statement was made about a person, even if it caused upset.
The judge said it was necessary to establish the untrue statement tended to injure a person's reputation and the words used in the article were incapable of doing so in this case.
He said: "Even if they had been capable of injuring his reputation, having regard to the plaintiff's actual reputation at the time that the article was published, the article did not and could not have injured his reputation."
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The judge also said if the article had been defamatory, the public interest defence would not have been available to the defendants.
He said "although the public may have been interested in stories about Mr Burke at the time that the article was published", there was no "public interest" in the article and therefore no basis for excusing what might otherwise have been defamatory.
Mr Burke is currently detained in Mountjoy Prison for his refusal to comply with court orders not to attend the Wilson's Hospital School in Co Westmeath, which has dismissed him over what he claims was standing up for his religious beliefs over what he says is transgenderism.
His appeal against his dismissal remains pending.
Judge Mulcahy said Mr Burke had "clashed with the school authorities" over an issue which Mr Burke claimed would violate his religious beliefs and was suspended.
He said "it couldn't have been doubted that Mr Burke had strongly held religious beliefs and was so determined in his expression and exercise of them that it had led to his suspension from school and the school considering it necessary to obtain a High Court injunction".
The judge added "it is difficult to credit Mr Burke’s complaint that an article wrongly claiming that he had repeatedly expressed religious views to his fellow prisoners would have had any bearing on his reputation at all".
"The evidence at the trial, for instance regarding his attendance at the Mayo Pride March in 2018 or outside the Oireachtas in 2011, clearly established that Mr Burke was prepared to take steps to give public expression to his religious views," said the judge.
He said it was well known to any reasonable member of society at the time of the article that Mr Burke did not comply with the High Court order to stay away from the school, had been imprisoned for contempt and had not purged his contempt.
This "wholly undermines any suggestion by Mr Burke that his reputation has been damaged by the article," the judge said adding "it must be the case that any person’s reputation is diminished in the eyes of a reasonable member of society if they simply refuse to comply with a court order".
"In a democratic state, operating in accordance with the rule of law, it is simply not open to anyone to decide with which orders of the court they will comply. If a person is the subject of a court order and considers that it was wrongly made, on any ground, then the remedy is to appeal that order, not to simply ignore it," added Judge Mulcahy.
