Teacher Enoch Burke speaks as if “he has no free will” and that it was somehow inevitable he would return to Wilson’s Hospital School after his release from prison last week, Mr Justice Brian Cregan said today.
The judge was delivering his written ruling on Tuesday explaining his decision on Monday to commit Mr Burke back to Mountjoy Prison for contempt of court, after he continued to trespass at the school, reports The Mirror.
He said Mr Burke always had a choice and had been granted his liberty in order to work on a fresh legal action aimed at stopping a Disciplinary Appeals Panel (DAP) hearing into his dismissal from his job.
The judge said Mr Burke knew that returning to the school would result in imprisonment again, reports The Mirror.
“Most rational and reasonable people would have chosen to stay home and work on their case. However, he decided to go out of his way to go back to the school where he is not wanted and to breach the court order again,” he said, reports The Mirror.
In those circumstances, the court had no alternative but to order his imprisonment once more, the judge said. He added that cases of this nature are always complex, both legally and factually, involving constitutional, contract, employment and injunction law.
Mr Burke is a teacher of German and History but has no knowledge of those areas of law, the judge said, reports The Mirror.
“He has demonstrated that lack of knowledge at every hearing before me. He has followed a disastrous legal strategy from start to finish.
“At each stage, instead of learning from his defeats, he has doubled down, leading to heavier defeats,” he said, reports The Mirror.
The judge said Mr Burke had lost every legal battle, apart from one successful objective bias claim regarding the composition of a previous DAP.
He added that he had hoped Mr Burke would reflect overnight on his statements before release last week that he intended to return to the school, but that had not happened, reports The Mirror.
Mr Burke, again appearing remotely from Mountjoy Prison, attempted to raise comments made by school principal Noel Cunningham in the Sunday Independent, in which Mr Cunningham said Mr Burke’s presence did not affect daily life in what he described as the happiest place in the world.
Mr Burke said Mr Cunningham had “raced up the road to change what he said” in the article for the purposes of an affidavit submitted for Monday’s hearing in which he was jailed again, reports The Mirror.
The judge told Mr Burke that this issue did not form part of his judgment and said he only wished to hear submissions on an application by Rosemary Mallon BL, on behalf of the school, seeking the costs of the committal hearing.
After further attempts by Mr Burke to raise the affidavit issue, the judge ordered his microphone to be muted and said he could see no reason not to award costs against him, reports The Mirror.
Mr Burke’s new legal action against the DAP will return to court on February 4.
Mr Burke claims he is imprisoned because of his opposition to transgenderism and to being required to refer to a pupil as “they/them” and by a new name.
He says this amounts to a breach of his constitutional and religious rights, reports The Mirror.
The judge said Mr Burke is in prison because he refused to comply with court orders prohibiting him from trespassing at the school following his dismissal for gross misconduct.
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