Greta Thunberg has responded after a cartoon sticker depicting her being sexually assaulted was widely circulated.

The sticker shows what appears to be a young girl being grabbed by her two braided pigtails from behind. The name “Greta” is printed across the woman’s back, while the logo for Canadian oil company X-Site Energy Services is printed at the bottom.

On Saturday, after the sticker caused widespread outrage on social media, the 17-year-old climate change activist responded to the image on Twitter, where she called it a sign of “winning”.

“They are starting to get more and more desperate…” she wrote. “This shows that we’re winning.”

The oil company’s general manager Doug Sparrow previously denied X-Site’s involvement in the circulation of the sticker, telling Canada’s Global News: “It’s not from X-Site or any employee; someone has done this. That’s all I know.”

On Sunday, the company had taken down its website, however, it has since been updated with an apology for the image.

“We recognise that it is not enough to apologise for the image associated with our company logo on the decals that circulated last week,” a statement shared to the company’s website reads. “This does not reflect the values of this company or our employees, and we deeply regret the pain we may have caused.”

According to X-Site, it is “taking action to condemn this image and its publication” and is committed to “recovering and destroying the decals we distributed”.

“Management accepts full responsibility and effective immediately, has made organisational changes to reflect this,” the statement continues, adding that the “other parties” have since produced more images and attached the company’s logo.

“We ask for everyone’s help in taking them and the original decal out of circulation and hope people will stop republishing these images,” X-Site wrote.

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The company concluded the statement explaining that it is committed to “maintaining a safe and respectful workplace” and that it would be holding sessions for all staff on respect in the workplace.

“We are proud of our team and the innovative services we provide the oil and gas industry,” the company wrote. “We have let our employees, our families and our customers down with this careless action, but as we are committed to help reduce our industry’s environmental footprint, we are committed to learn from and correct our mistake.”

The circulation of the image originally sparked an investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Alberta, however, on Friday, the police force said in a statement that it does not believe it constitutes a “criminal offence” because it had been determined the decal “does not meet the elements of child pornography … nor does the decal depict a non-consensual act that would be a direct threat to the person”.