Jailed teacher Enoch Burke has been released from Mountjoy Prison, where he has been incarcerated for 9 months, due to a High Court order by Justice Mark Sanfey.
Burke has been imprisoned since September over his refusal to stay away from Wilson’s Hospital School in Co. Westmeath. He was found to be in contempt of court for refusing to comply with this order.
However, according to Justice Sanfey, because State examinations are now concluded and the school’s staff are on holidays, the teacher would have no reason to return to the premises and should now be released.
Notably, Burke was not required to purge his contempt and agree to comply with the terms of an order made against him last year.
The order involved Justice Alexander Owens granting Wilson’s Hospital a permanent injunction keeping Burke from going to the school. Burke refused to comply with the order, resulting in him being jailed for contempt for the second time.
Justice Sanfey said he hoped that the teacher would use his time during the school break to consider his circumstances, and warned him that the school injunction is still in place. The judge said that if Burke breaches the order again, he would not hesitate to send him back to prison.
In total, Burke has been incarcerated for over 400 days already.
The jailed teacher maintains that he is not in contempt of court, and says that he has been wrongfully incarcerated because of his objections to trangender ideology after being asked to refer to a student by different pronouns.