Enoch Burke loses defamation claim against Sunday Independent publisher

Enoch Burke has lost his defamation claim against the publisher of the Sunday Independent over an article alleging he was moved jail cell for his safety because he was “annoying” other prisoners.

Mr Justice Rory Mulcahy held that the words in the story, published in October 2022, were incapable of injuring his reputation.

The judge said the seven paragraphs complained about are untrue, which is “unfortunate”, but the tort of defamation and the Defamation Act of 2009 do not provide a remedy for simply untrue statements made about a person. To obtain a remedy, a plaintiff must establish that the untrue statement tended to injure their reputation, he said.

This story came during Mr Burke’s first stint in prison for breaching a court order restraining him from attending at St Wilson’s Hospital School, which had suspended and later dismissed him after he publicly objected to being instructed to refer to a male student using they/them pronouns.

Although he was released for a short period, Mr Burke remains in jail. His situation is due to be reviewed by another High Court judge on Friday.

Mr Justice Mulcahy said “it must be the case that any person’s reputation is diminished in the eyes of a reasonable member of society if they simply refuse to comply with a court order”.

A reasonable reader of the article could not have had a view of Mr Burke’s reputation that was capable of being injured by an incorrect allegation that he had been speaking excessively about religion following his imprisonment, the judge said.

“The suggestion that he severely annoyed his fellow prisoners by the repeated expression of his religious beliefs is […] a whisper in the hurricane of noise which his actions in September 2022 (when he was first jailed) created,” the judge added.

Mr Burke sued Mediahuis, as publisher of the Sunday Independent; the newspaper’s editor Alan English and reporter Ali Bracken alleging he was defamed in a story published on October 9th, 2022. The defendants acknowledged there were “minor” errors in the piece but strongly denied Mr Burke was defamed.

The article cited unnamed sources in support of its statement that Mr Burke had been moved to a new jail cell for his own safety as he was “annoying other prisoners” and “repeatedly expressing his outspoken views and beliefs”.

The newspaper issued an apology on January 1st, 2023, and clarified that Mr Burke’s cell change was for “operational reasons only and not for the reasons stated in the article”. It strongly denies defamation and pleads fair and reasonable publication on a matter of public interest.

Mr Justice Mulcahy was unconvinced there was any public interest benefit from the article. In his ruling he said he would have found that the “fair and reasonable publication” defence was not open to the publishers had the article been defamatory.

Mr Burke claimed the publisher conducted a “malicious hit job” by portraying him as someone who repeatedly expresses his religious beliefs to the point that people cannot bear it and might resort to physical violence.

The German and history teacher told the court the paper made a “grave and serious libel” and defamed his character.

The defendants denied his claims.