A POST ON the social media platform X that was re-shared by its owner Elon Musk contains numerous false claims about teacher Enoch Burke and his legal troubles.

“BREAKING: Enoch Burke, a Christian schoolteacher in Ireland, will be STRIPPED of his salary after refusing to use they/them pronouns for a ‘transgender’ student,” the 7 March post by user @CilComLFC reads.

“Burke has already spent 500 days in prison, and the Irish Courts are now punishing him further.

“This is horrific.”

The post was shared the following day by Elon Musk with the one-word comment “wow”. It currently has more than 35 million views on X.

The account @CilComLFC, who Musk responded to, claims to be Irish and is an active spreader of misinformation.

Their posts often contain conspiracy theories, including accusing left-leaning figures of rape and murder, explicit racism, as well as variations on the Great Replacement theory, an idea that posits there is a conspiracy to wipe out the native people of Europe and replace them with non-white immigrants.

A search of X.com shows that Musk has reposted content from this account more than half a dozen times.

The Journal has previously debunked false claims spread by this account.

More than a dozen Facebook posts, garnering more than 10,000 views, have also spread screenshots of the post, or made posts with the exact same wording. 

The Enoch Burke post

The original post contains multiple misleading claims about Enoch Burke.

“Enoch Burke, a Christian schoolteacher in Ireland, will be STRIPPED of his salary after refusing to use they/them pronouns for a ‘transgender’ student,” the post begins.

This narrative has spread widely since the Enoch Burke legal saga began, including in multiple languages, despite an abundance of reporting contradicting it.

Implications that Burke is being stripped of his salary, or is being legally punished for refusing to use a student’s preferred pronouns, are false.

Previous iterations of this claim said that Burke had been imprisoned for refusing to endorse “transgender ideology”; these claims were also false.

Burke was neither imprisoned nor fined for refusing to call someone “they” or not endorsing “transgender ideology”.

Instead, Burke was fined for breaking a court order. In 2022, Wilson’s Hospital School in Co Westmeath sought an injunction after Burke turned up at school while suspended.

Burke – who had taught at the school – is alleged to have interrupted a church service held to mark the school’s 260th anniversary before following the principal around.

He is said to have loudly questioned her about a request she made for teachers to address a transgender student by their preferred pronouns.

The school initiated a disciplinary process against Burke over the incident, resulting in him being placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the process.

However, Burke continued to show up at the school despite being suspended, prompting Wilson’s to ask for a court order forbidding him from the grounds, saying Burke was disrupting the school and its students.

Burke has been both fined and arrested multiple times for breaking that court order.

Burke has spent over 500 days in Mountjoy Prison for repeatedly violating orders to stay away from Wilson’s Hospital School since August 2022.

Burke has also been released from prison multiple times, without purging his contempt, when school was off because judges noted his potential presence would be less disruptive.

Last month, a judge found that Burke owed just over €79,000 in fines for continuing to attend at the school.

To date, Enoch Burke hasn’t paid any of the significant fines, the judge said.

He also remains on full pay, pending the outcome of an appeal against his dismissal.

It is also notable that the misleading post about Burke that was shared by Elon Musk doesn’t mention that Burke remains on full pay despite not having taught at the school in years.

The post also frames the garnishing of Burke’s wages as an example of the court “punishing him further”. Rather, it is a proposal to enforce a series of fines Burke accrued for breaching court orders since 2023. 

The High Court is currently considering how to collect the money owed by Burke, including giving the state the power to take the money directly from the wages Burke still receives.

In short: Burke is not being punished for refusing to use a pronoun, the fines are not new and have never been collected (though this may change), and Burke still gets paid by a school that he is in a legal battle with and hasn’t worked at in years.

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