A High Court judge has said teacher Enoch Burke and his family could be using his court case to make money and that it was clear Mr Burke had "something to hide" about his income.
Mr Justice Brian Cregan made the comment while refusing an application by Mr Burke to amend some of the language he used in a recent judgment ordering him to be sent back to Mountjoy Prison.
In his latest ruling, the judge again strongly criticised Mr Burke, saying he was telling lies and trying to inhabit a reality of his own, "where his lies are the truth and everything everyone else says is lies."
He said Mr Burke was using the courts to pursue a political campaign against transgenderism, and that was an abuse of process.
Last week, Mr Burke made an application to the high court for a number of changes to the judgment delivered by Mr Justice Cregan in November.
The judge in his ruling, ordered that Mr Burke should be committed to prison, for a fourth time, for his continued breach of a court order by trespassing at Wilson's Hospital School where he formerly worked.
Mr Burke was suspended and subsequently dismissed from the school.
However he is still being paid by the Department of Education pending the outcome of his appeal against his dismissal. Before his imprisonment he attended at the school when it was open, saying he had a right to attend at his place of work.
He continued to attend despite the imposition of fines totalling more than €200,000 and the school's employment of security guards to keep him out.
Mr Burke complained about the judge's description of him as "baleful and malign" in the ruling, and about the judge's use of the words "roaming" and "stalking" when describing his behaviour at the school.
Mr Burke also said the judge’s finding that he was a "potential danger to the pupils and teachers at the school" was false.
The judge said he had at first considered whether he should even entertain Mr Burke's application to amend the judgment. He said Mr Burke seemed to think that he could come to court on a regular basis and seek relief from the courts while at the same time refusing to obey court orders.
The judge said this was entirely unacceptable but he had decided to consider the application.
Judge stands over description of Burke
Mr Burke’s first objection was to the judge’s use of the word "baleful" to describe him. Mr Burke said this word meant "threatening harm". Judge Cregan said Mr Burke had obtained this meaning from "some sort of Google search" which gave only one meaning of the word.
However, the judge said the authoritative source for the meaning of words was the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary, which had numerous definitions of the word.
Among the definitions of baleful, the judge said, was: "full of malign deadly or noxious influence; pernicious, destructive, noxious, injurious, mischievous, malignant."
Judge Cregan said it was clear that Mr Burke’s presence at the school from the point of view of pupils and teachers and viewed objectively, was "pernicious, destructive, injurious and malignant".
He said that Mr Burke’s definition of the word as "threatening harm" was not in the OED, but he said even if it was, this definition was also applicable to Mr Burke whose daily trespassing, he said, caused harm to the school.
The judge said Mr Burke had again relied on an "inadequate Google search" for his definition of the word "malign". He said there was no doubt Mr Burke bore a grudge and had ill will towards the school. He said there was also no doubt Mr Burke was "plotting and contriving against the school" and was fully aware the school didn’t want him there.
The judge said he had chosen the words "baleful" and "malign" carefully. He said they seemed to be entirely apposite and he would not be removing them.
Mr Justice Cregan said he also stood over his use of the word "roaming" to describe Mr Burke wandering unlawfully through the corridors of the school. He said Mr Burke’s objection to the use of the word "stalking" was entirely without merit.
He said Mr Burke’s objection was based on the definition of "stalking" as a criminal offence. The judge said the word had been in use for hundreds of years before the 2023 legislation, and that was the context in which he used it.
Judge Cregan said it was clear he had used the word figuratively "to capture the essence of the troubling spirit which is Mr Burke’s presence in the school". His daily trespassing into the heart of the school, clearly caused anxiety and apprehension among pupils and teachers, the judge said.
The judge said he stood by his finding that Mr Burke was a "potential" danger to pupils and teachers of the school. He said Mr Burke's argument that he had treated all members of the school community "with courtesy and respect" was nonsense and he had treated them with the grossest disrespect.
The judge said he did not intend to add a paragraph to his judgment quoting the principal who said he had never seen Mr Burke engage in physical violence. The judge said that was the very least one would expect from a teacher.
Strategy of confrontation
Judge Cregan said Mr Burke had claimed his character had been assassinated. But the judge said from a review of his own actions and words, Mr Burke was a teacher who verbally berates a bishop during a religious service; who berates the principal after the school service, in front of pupils, teachers, and parents; who was dismissed for gross misconduct; who trespasses upon school property; who breaches court orders and would rather the school pay for security guards rather than spend the money on its own pupils.
The judge continued that Mr Burke was a man who preferred a strategy of confrontation rather than one of dialogue and compromise, who exhibited an abnormal degree of verbal aggression and disrespect, who lacked insight into the inappropriateness of his behaviour, who verbally abuses all judges before whom he appears, who lies in sworn documents, who lies to security guards and lies on every social media post about the reasons why he is in prison.
The judge said Mr Burke had assassinated his own character by his own deeds and words.
Judge Cregan said Mr Burke could be released at any time if he purged his contempt by agreeing not to trespass on school property. However, the judge said he would not be released for Christmas as he had been previously. He said the school should not have to await with fear and trepidation over the Christmas holidays to see if Mr Burke intended to trespass again on the first day of the new school term.
However, the judge said the idea that Mr Burke was to be imprisoned for life was "nonsense".
He said if the underlying dispute between the school and Mr Burke came to an end, Mr Burke could be released. If he was reinstated to his position at the school by the Disciplinary Appeals Panel, then he would cease to be a trespasser.
'Self-created fiction'
On the other hand, the judge said, if his dismissal was upheld, then Mr Burke’s "self-created legal fiction that he can turn up for work every day because he still employed by the school" would, the judge hoped, come to an end.
The judge said it was vital the DAP should make its decision as quickly as possibly to try to bring the dispute to an end.
The judge said "the amount of lies being told by Mr Burke" was one of the most disturbing aspects of the case. He said Mr Burke was in breach of a valid court order not to trespass at the school. It was for the courts to set out why someone was in prison, the judge said. It was not open to Mr Burke to pretend he was in prison for a different reason.
He said Mr Burke said repeatedly that he was in prison because of his opposition to transgender rights.
The judge said he knew these statements were lies, yet he continued to make them. He said Mr Burke seemed to be trying to inhabit a reality of his own, "where words mean what he says they mean, where his lies are the truth and everything everyone else says was lies." The judge said the court was concerned with the objective truth of the situation.
Mr Justice Cregan said there may well be good arguments why teachers should not be compelled to call pupils by "they/them" pronouns. And he said there may be good reasons why they should. He said the case raised important questions about freedom of religion and freedom of speech. But he said in order that impartial courts could consider these clashes of constitutional rights, the rule of law had to be maintained and court orders had to be obeyed.
He said Mr Burke could protest every single day outside the gates of the school, just not inside them.
The judge said the case was exceptional because Mr Burke had made a calculation that it "brought him notoriety and his 15 minutes of fame". He also said it could be that Mr Burke and his family wished to make money from the campaign.
The judge said Mr Burke’s refusal to comply with court orders to furnish details of his income and expenditure, made it clear "he had something to hide in this regard". He accused Mr Burke of not being concerned with the truth or the rule of law.
The judge said the more the case had gone on, the more he had come to realise that Mr Burke was not interested in defending the legal case taken by the school against him at all. He said Mr Burke and his family had sought to disrupt and undermine every hearing they had intended and engaged in verbal abuse of whatever judge was hearing the application.
The judge said Mr Burke had refused repeatedly to accept court rulings and he and members of his family had been dragged "kicking and screaming" from the Court of Appeal.
The judge said Mr Burke was using the courts to pursue his political campaign against transgenderism.
The courts were not the appropriate place to do this, the judge said, and his conduct of the case was an abuse of process.
The judge repeated that to be released, Mr Burke does not have to give any undertaking to call a child they or them or to accept transgenderism. He simply had to agree not to trespass on the school’s property.
Before the judge delivered his judgment, Enoch Burke’s mother, Martina, brother Isaac and sister, Ammi were removed from court by gardaí after refusing to leave when requested to do so by the judge.
