A ROGUE employee has been blamed for using a photo of a grieving widow from the Royal Wootton Bassett military repatriations to sell life insurance.

Heidi Kirkpatrick was devastated to see a photo of herself mourning the death of husband Jamie at one of the many funeral processions that took place in the town after military personnel killed in action in Afghanistan were brought back to the UK.

Corporal Kirkpatrick was killed in 2010 during a firefight with the Taliban while serving with 101 Engineer Regiment. The 32-year-old’s body was brought through Bassett where the photo of his grieving wife Heidi, 33, was taken.

She has since spoken out after seeing the image reproduced by insurance firm Net Finance Relief, who posted it on their Facebook account on a link to a life insurance policy.

The offending image has since been deleted after Heidi expressed her outrage at their actions.

She told the South Wales Evening News: “It’s disgusting that they have done this.

“It was so upsetting seeing it being used to sell life insurance. It is so insensitive.

“My husband was killed fighting for his country and now his memory is being used to try and line someone else’s pockets.”

Net Finance Relief have apologised for the mistake and promised policies have been revised to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

“We would like to publicly and personally apologise to Heidi Kirkpatrick and her family,” a spokesman said.

“We take our mistake very seriously and honour the veterans who have served and paid the ultimate price in order to protect our freedom.

“One of our employees thought the photo was licensed for commercial use. This was not the case. The images in question have been permanently removed and the employee in question has been reprimanded.

“We have now reviewed our internal policies to make sure we do not make a similar mistake in the future.”