PMSA board member Dr Bridget Cullen slammed for Facebook post ‘stereotyping poor people’
A distinguished board member of the Christian body that runs four elite Queensland schools has come under fire for “stereotyping poor people” and using foul language in public Facebook posts following the theft of her luxury BMW.
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A distinguished board member of the Christian body that runs four elite Queensland schools has come under fire over claims of “stereotyping poor people” and using obscenities, including c**t, in a series of public Facebook posts following the theft of her luxury BMW.
Bridget Cullen, newly appointed to the Presbyterian and Methodist Schools’ Association which owns Brisbane Boys’ College, Clayfield College, Somerville House and Sunshine Coast Grammar School, has also been accused of being “wildly inappropriate” in her commentary on the juvenile who allegedly stole her black 2017 BMW 5 series sports car from her Indooroopilly home in late December.
SCROLL DOWN TO SEE A SELECTION OF THE ENTRIES FROM THE “RESCUE JOURNEY” FACEBOOK PAGE
Dr Cullen, also acting chair of the BBC school council following the explosive resignation of Mark Gray last year, started the Bridget’s BMW Rescue Journey page after becoming frustrated with police efforts to recover her car.
But senior sources within the schools have told The Courier-Mail they are “utterly appalled” by the “horrific language” in Dr Cullen’s posts.
One said the page was “not a good look” while another said the posts were “wildly inappropriate, and stereotyped poor people in disadvantaged areas”.
In the posts Dr Cullen, a lawyer with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and a mother with five children still living at home, traces her car via a BMW tracking app and pretends to be the offender, concocting satirical narratives as the teenager continues to break the law.
She describes his made-up dysfunctional home life, saying his mother is a prostitute in government housing in Redbank who no longer gives him “freebies” by letting him watch her “working” like she did when he and his brother “Tyson” were small.
According to her posts, the fictional meth-addicted teen is also a dealer who uses fake IDs to “buy up big on pseudoephedrine for (a) big cook up”, and he has spent time in the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre where he got to catch up with his remand prisoner father.
He calls his brother, other car thieves and people walking their dogs in Indooroopilly “c**ts”, and when his girlfriend “Jade” gets “totally wasted”, he has sex with her friend “Charity-Leigh”, a tattooed “smoking hot piece of tail from Target”, in her Loganlea house.
After he steals mylar balloons “that all the private school prissy types have got all over Insta” to wish his grandmother a happy birthday, “Gran comes running out of the caravan, faggin’ away on her Winnies, yelling, “What the f*ck are you trying to do - if they find out I’m 47, they’ll make me give up my lease in the (over-50s) f-ing village!!!”
The Bridget’s BMW Rescue Journey page has almost 600 followers, including high-profile businesswoman Pinky Singh, the Liberal National Party candidate for the Brisbane seat of McConnel in the 2020 state election, and a string of big-name lawyers.
Followers have described the satirical posts, many of which Dr Cullen has shared on her personal Facebook account, as “absolute gold”, “hilarious” and perfect for a Netflix series.
One of the page’s “top fans” is Tam Elabbasi, one of the parents who controversially sued BBC last year after four students were expelled over an alleged sexting-bashing scandal. The PMSA subsequently reinstated the students following coverage by The Courier-Mail.
Mr Elabbasi, a criminal lawyer, posted on January 26: “I’m negotiating your movie deal! Easy money lol!”
Dr Cullen replied: “You could find yourself written into the evolving plot as a character. I think there’s going to be a need for lawyers again real soon. Think about who will play you?”
On December 23 when Dr Cullen, also an adjunct professor of law at Griffith University, started the page, she wrote: “Want to know what happens when you steal a car in Queensland? Nothing. The cops are fantastic people, but under-resourced. My car was stolen four days ago, and I have obtained the GPS coordinates from BMW Corporate to facilitate QPS being able to locate the vehicle. But guess what? They aren’t allowed to. They told me it was because of privacy laws, and the limits of the QPS Memorandum of Understanding with telecommunications carriers. It has to be life or death before they can use the computer to find a stolen car. I suppose that bureaucracy might explain why crime, particularly auto theft, is increasing.”
Many followers have come out in sympathy and support for Dr Cullen’s plight and congratulated her on “making the best of a very crappy situation”.
In a statement responding to the negative feedback, Dr Cullen said “when a woman is in a leadership position some people will look for an easy way to cut them down”.
“Just before Christmas, I was the victim of home invasion and car theft while my children were at home. In an attempt to find information, I created a Facebook page to harness the power of social media to assist Police in their investigation,” she said.
“I have worked closely with QPS who have recovered my vehicle and I have now deleted the page. I hope that others impacted by such crimes are also successful, and I am grateful for the work of QPS, and those people who provided information in response to my posts.
“Any attempt to suggest that my posts were more than this would be driven by an agenda that does not respect my status as a recent victim of crime. I am committed to social justice, for all persons in our society. It is often the case when a woman is in a leadership position that some people will look for an easy way to cut them down.”
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