WHAT WAS CLAIMED
A teacher has been sentenced to life in prison for "transphobia".
OUR VERDICT
False. The teacher has been imprisoned for contempt of court and is not serving a life sentence.
AAP FACTCHECK - A teacher has not been sentenced to life in prison for "transphobia", despite claims on social media.
The claim centres around Irish teacher Enoch Burke, who was suspended and later dismissed for confronting his school's principal over a request relating to a transgender child in 2022.
He has been jailed multiple times for violating court orders to stay away from the school following his suspension, including most recently in November 2025.
The false claim appears in a screenshot shared on social media following his latest court appearance, including by Australian and New Zealand users.
"BREAKING: Christian schoolteacher Enoch Burke sentenced to life in prison for transphobia," text in the screenshot image reads.
"The Irish teacher will now spend the rest of his life behind bars — with his only hope of release resting on a last-ditch legal challenge."
One post includes a still from a video of Mr Burke outside the High Court in Dublin while attending a hearing on December 3.
AAP FactCheck previously debunked the claim that Mr Burke was jailed for his views on transgender people.
In August 2022, the secondary school teacher and evangelical Christian was suspended from Wilson's Hospital School for alleged misconduct after he interrupted a church service and publicly confronted the then-principal.
The confrontation followed a request from the school to call a student by they/them pronouns, which he said was against his beliefs.
Mr Burke continued to show up to the school while he was suspended, leading to a court-granted temporary injunction to prevent him from attending, according to a report in the Irish Times.
He was jailed in September 2022 for three months for breaching this order and then formally dismissed from his job in January 2023, facing fines of 700 euros per day if he didn't agree to stay away from the school.
Over the next few years, Mr Burke amassed around 225,000 euros in fines and was jailed again in September 2023 and September 2024 for trespassing in breach of the court order, after being released during school holidays.
Mr Burke went back to the school again in early November 2025 and was arrested on November 25, according to The Irish Times.
However, he has not been sentenced to life in prison and will be released if he agrees not to trespass on the school grounds.
At a hearing on December 3, Mr Burke was told by Justice Brian Cregan that he will stay in jail until he agrees not to trespass at the school, which he refused to do, The Journal reported.
Tom Hickey, an associate professor of constitutional law at Dublin City University, told AAP FactCheck Mr Burke has been jailed for civil contempt of court, not for his views.
"He will be in prison unless and until he 'purges' his contempt," Assoc Prof Hickey said.
"He can do this simply by agreeing to not attend at the school in question. So he decides if and when he leaves prison."
At the December hearing, Justice Cregan was explicit that the court was not ordering him to change his religious views or use certain pronouns because those matters are not an issue in the case, Assoc Prof Hickey explained.
"The idea that Mr Burke is being imprisoned because of his religious beliefs is nonsense," Justice Cregan wrote in a November 28 judgement.
"This court does not imprison people for their religious beliefs. Mr Burke is being imprisoned because he is trespassing on other people's property. No more. No less."
The judge was also explicit that Mr Burke would be released from prison should he agree to comply with the trespass order.
"I would like to make it crystal clear to Mr Burke what he must do to purge his contempt and to be released from prison," the judgement states.
"He must give an undertaking to the court that he will not enter on, or trespass on, the school's property again without the school's consent. That is all…
"He does not have to give any undertaking that he will follow the school principal's direction to call a child 'they' or 'them'.
"He does not have to accept transgenderism. He does not have to stop protesting against transgenderism. He does not have to change his religious beliefs one iota."
He added that Mr Burke "has the keys to his own prison."
Dr Charles O'Mahony, a law lecturer at the University of Galway, previously told AAP FactCheck that Mr Burke was imprisoned for refusing to comply with orders of the Irish High Court.
There is no provision in Irish law to arrest a person for not endorsing transgender ideology, he added.
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