Irish teacher jailed for third time after defying order to stay away from the school that fired him

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LONDON (AP) — A teacher in Ireland who says he was fired for his views on gender has been jailed for a third time for refusing to stay away from the school where he used to work.

Enoch Burke was found in contempt by a High Court judge on Monday for violating a court injunction barring him from Wilson’s Hospital School in Mullingar, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Dublin.

He was suspended by the school in 2022 after publicly objecting to what he called “transgender ideology” and refusing to address a trans student by their preferred name and pronoun. He was later fired, and has launched an appeal.

He has continued to show up at the school, and has spent more than 400 days in prison after defying a court order to stay away. He was released in June from a stint in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison and began going to the school again when the term began in late August.

The school took legal action, saying Burke's presence was disruptive for staff and students.

Ireland’s national police force, An Garda Síochána, said officers “executed a High Court order in Mullingar, Co. Westmeath on Monday afternoon, 2nd September 2024. A man was detained by An Garda Síochána and has now appeared before the High Court.”

Burke, who has become a well-known figure in Ireland, claims he is being silenced for his Christian beliefs.

Courts have rejected that notion. An Irish High Court judge said in September that “it is an insult to every law-abiding citizen for someone who is the subject of a court order to decide, unilaterally, that it should be ignored.”

Lawyers have pointed out that Burke can end the legal drama by agreeing to abide by the injunction, which he has refused to do.

“Unless people obey court orders, we cannot really expect of any kind of social order at all,” Tom O’Malley, a retired law lecturer at University College Galway, told broadcaster RTE.

“There has to be some kind of system whereby people have to be sanctioned or at least coerced or persuaded as much as possible to obey them and unfortunately, beyond imprisonment … there doesn’t appear to be the alternative to it right now.”