Rehtaeh Parsons’ Picture Used In Tasteless Facebook Dating Ad

A picture of Rehtaeh Parsons was used by a dating company in a Facebook ad, with the dead teen’s face illustrating an advertisement on the social network urging users to “find love in Canada.”

It’s not clear how Rehtaeh Parsons specifically was selected for the tasteless ad, but the teen’s suicide death earlier this year moves the juxtaposition of the image from “without permission” to “completely offensive and shocking.”

Dad Glen Canning was stunned by the use of Rehtaeh’s pic in a dating site ad, writing on the web:

“I am completely bewildered and disgusted by this… This is my daughter, Rehtaeh. They have her in an ad for meeting singles. I don’t even know what to say.”

Toronto resident Andrew Ennals spotted the horribly unfortunate use of the teen’s image in the dating ad, taking a screenshot and tweeting the picture to followers last week.

He tells the paper the Toronto Star:

“It kind of caught my eye because it’s a photo that we’ve all seen a lot… I was like wait a minute, is that?… I was stunned at how inappropriate it was.”

Facebook addressed the Rehtaeh Parsons dating ad in a statement, saying:

“This is an extremely unfortunate example of an advertiser scraping an image from the Internet and using it in their ad campaign… We apologize for any harm this has caused.”

Canning blogged about finding daughter Rehtaeh’s pic on a dating ad, posting the screenshot and making the above statement in a post titled “possibly the worst Facebook ad ever.”

The dating ad with Rehtaeh Parsons has since been removed from Facebook, but no explanation has been offered as to how it came to appear on the social network in the first place.