Josiah Burke video screengrab / YouTube
CV NEWS FEED // An Evangelical Christian teacher in Ireland who was suspended after opposing his school’s pro-transgender directive has been jailed for a third time after breaking a court order.
Police arrested Enoch Burke on September 2 after he violated a court order prohibiting him from entering the premises of Wilson’s Hospital School, according to a report from Sky News. After the Irish High Court ruled the same day that he had broken the court order, Burke was placed in Mountjoy Prison.
Burke’s X account posted a video that included footage of the arrest and a clip of Burke speaking to authorities.
“…I’m not going to turn my back [on] my duty to my students,” Burke tells authorities in the video, later saying, “I have a right to work here, I have a right to be here, and not to tell students they need to… take puberty blockers.”
Burke has already spent a total of more than 400 days in jail. He was jailed in September 2022 and in September 2023 after breaching the court order, according to Sky News.
In August 2022, Burke opposed the then-principal’s directive to use the pronoun “they” and the preferred name for a male student who identified as “transgender,” according to a March 2023 article by The Belfast Telegraph.
The Telegraph reported that the school’s deputy principal, John Galligan, told the High Court about Burke’s actions at two staff meetings after the then-principal sent an email about how to address the “transgender” student. Galligan said that, at the second staff meeting, Burke “repeated again and again ‘because of my religious beliefs, I am opposed to transgenderism.’”
According to Galligan, Burke also did not specify how he planned to refer to the student so he was placed on administrative leave.
According to a May 2023 report by BBC, the High Court ruled in favor of the school’s decision to suspend Burke in August 2022 and granted an injunction that prohibited Burke from going to the school while suspended.
Burke “had argued that [the suspension] was unlawful and a result of his opposition to the extension of transgender rights,” BBC reported:
Mr Justice Alexander Owens ruled that, due to Enoch Burke’s behaviour at a school board of management meeting, it was “rational and reasonable” for it to expect him to engage in further harmful or disruptive conduct.
According to a September 3, 2024, report from The Telegraph, after the Court ordered that Burke again be placed in jail, he said, “This court is simply denying me my religious beliefs, and my right to my religious beliefs.”
“I am a Christian. I have Christian beliefs. My belief is male and female, God made them male and female,” Burke said.
