The High Court ruled against the former schoolteacher.
Enoch Burke faces a huge bill of up to €200,000 after failing his defamation case in the High Court.
The Evangelical Christian filed a suit against a Sunday Independent article which branded him an annoyance to his fellow prisoners.
According to The Irish Times, Judge Rory Mulcahy ruled that article could not be defamatory given his already damaged public reputation.
The article, which was published in October 2022, reported that Burke had been moved out of the prison’s general population “for his own safety.”
Following his imprisonment for defying a court order, it claimed he had been annoying fellow inmates by repeatedly expressing his outspoken views and beliefs.
The judge added that he ‘hadn’t identified anything which would justify a departure from the default position that the defendants, having been entirely successful in their defence of the proceedings, are entitled to an award of costs’.
Mediahuis Ireland, the company which owns the Sunday Independent, accumulated legal costs for defending the four-day action earlier this year which will run into six figures and could even stretch as high as €200,000.
The Mayo native became caught up in a gender row at Wilson’s Hospital School in Co Westmeath over the issue of gender reassignment.
In May 2022, the History and German teacher told his headteacher that he ‘opposed transgenderism’ due to his religious beliefs and stated he would not address the student, who was transitioning, by their new name and using ‘they’ pronouns.
It sparked a chain of events which saw him suspended from his role while the school carried out an investigation into his conduct and eventually sacked. However, even after he was put on leave, Burke continued to turn up at the school gates and refused to leave.
The school then took out a temporary court order to keep him away, but the devout evangelist kept turning up.
He had been held in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison for contempt of court until his release at the end of last month.
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Thankfully for Burke, he has still been getting paid €72,000 of his salary since he was suspended from his role 18 months ago.
Mr Burke had described the article as a ‘wholly malicious hit job’, but Judge Mulcahy ruled his reputation was already injured by his continued refusals to obey court orders.
“He had behaved and was continuing to behave in a way which significantly adversely affected his reputation,” Judge Mulcahy said.
“The suggestion that he severely annoyed his fellow prisoners by the repeated expression of his religious beliefs is, in those circumstances, a whisper in the hurricane of noise which his actions in September 2022 created.”
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