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Meghan says allegations against her father were sent to the Met in 2018
— 4 mins read
The Duchess of Sussex says a letter making allegations about her father reached the Metropolitan Police eight years ago. Thomas Markle denies any wrongdoing.
The Duchess of Sussex has said she is “deeply distressed” by allegations that her father, Thomas Markle, possessed child sexual abuse images. Mr Markle denies the claims, and no court has tested them.
The Sun first reported the allegations on Thursday evening. Thomas Markle Jr, Meghan’s half-brother, told the paper he had found the images on computers and a phone his father left behind. He says he then went to the police in the Philippines, where father and son had lived since early 2025. According to The Sun, he has given a sworn statement to the authorities in Cebu, and papers were filed in Cebu City on Thursday. The paper also reports that a Philippine task force has been set up through the Women and Children’s Protection Centre, and that the FBI has confirmed it received the contents of the statement.
No arrest or charge has been reported.
A firm denial
Mr Markle, 82, has rejected the allegations outright. He told the Daily Mail they were “sick lies”. He said: “I could never do what I’m being accused of.”
He says he never had access to the computers in question. According to him, they were boxed up in Mexico and shipped to the Philippines when the family moved there in January 2025, and he asked his son more than once to send them back. Mr Markle says the two men have not spoken for months, and he has suggested his son is doing this for money.
Samantha Markle, his daughter from his first marriage, has backed him. She told the Mail that Thomas Jr was making the claims up, and that their father had not had access to the computers for around two years.
Accounts of when and where the devices were left behind also differ. Neither version has been independently confirmed.
Meghan’s statement
The Duchess responded on Friday. “I am deeply distressed at the news that has come to light in the last 24 hours, and my thoughts are with any children who may have been harmed,” she said.
She then revealed something that had not been public before. She said a letter was sent to the Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection in 2018, and was later shared with her. “It made troubling and disturbing allegations against my father,” she said. “I was given assurances that these were being investigated.”
She then revealed something that had not been public before. She said a letter was sent to the Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection in 2018, and was later shared with her.
She did not say what the allegations were, who wrote the letter, or when she saw it.
She went on to explain her distance from her father in terms she has not used before. Her choice not to let him have contact with her children, she said, “was for one reason: to protect them.” She added that she had “trusted that the authorities were doing the same for other families”, and that her “sincerest hope is that justice will be fully served.”
Questions for the Met
The 2018 letter raises obvious questions. What did it allege? Was it investigated, and by whom?
Thomas Markle has never lived in Britain. In 2018 he was living in Mexico, out of the Met’s reach. Any real action would have meant passing the allegations to the authorities in the United States or Mexico, and nobody knows whether that happened.
The Met has not publicly said what became of the letter.
A long estrangement
Meghan has had no contact with her father for eight years. The rift opened in the weeks before her May 2018 wedding to the Duke of Sussex, after Mr Markle admitted staging paparazzi photographs and then did not attend the ceremony. A string of tabloid interviews followed. In 2019 he gave the Mail on Sunday a private letter she had written to him, and she later won a High Court case over its publication.
Until now, that very public falling-out has been the accepted explanation for the estrangement. Friday’s statement puts a different reason on the record, at least where her children are concerned.
Mr Markle had a severe stroke in 2022, after which Thomas Jr moved to Rosarito, Mexico, to be near him. Meghan contacted her father in December 2025, after he had a leg amputated. He went back to the United States earlier this year for health reasons and now lives in a care facility in Florida.
The allegations against him are unproven, and he denies them.
