I was once informed that hell would freeze over before I ever wrote anything kind or sympathetic when it came to Meghan Markle. In which case, that crackling sound you hear is ice forming over Hades, because recent events have convinced me that, for once, the Duchess of Sussex merits not the usual dismissal mixed with contempt that she has been treated with by many figures in the British media, but instead understanding and, indeed, sympathy as to why she has done many of the things that she is responsible for over the past eight years. Yes, even With Love, Meghan.
When the news that Markle’s father, Thomas, was said to have a considerable stash of child pornography broke, my initial reaction was incomprehension. Firstly, his son Thomas Jr. had given an interview to the Sun. And while Meghan herself issued a statement saying how appalled she was by the “troubling and disturbing allegations” that had been made, her half-sister Samantha came out with an equally forthright denial of these allegations. It seemed – like so many things involving the Duchess – to be a morass of spin, accusations and mud-flinging, and I was unsure whether there was anything to it.
Meghan’s fixation on her two main goals in life – family and privacy – now make far more sense
Seventy-two hours later, Thomas’s guilt remains uncertain and unproven, but a great deal more information has now emerged into the public domain. As far back as January 2019, the Met received a letter from Markle’s first wife Roslyn Loveless, in which she alleged that her former husband was a child abuser. The police force apparently shared these allegations with Meghan but took no further action in disclosing them to other law enforcement agencies.
When Meghan finally contacted her father last year, after a blood clot led to an amputation of his left leg, it was not with the expected words of sympathy. Instead, she sent him a letter apparently informing him that he would never see his grandchildren, that she believed the allegations against him and that she knew he was an abuser. All this took place against the usual backdrop of smiley Instagram pictures and the Christmas installment of the damned With Love, Meghan. Suddenly, her acting abilities seem far more considerable than many had imagined.
It may, of course, be that there is nothing to these allegations, which Thomas himself vigorously denied in an interview with the Mail on Sunday, claiming that while he had visited the Far East to have sex with prostitutes on multiple occasions, they had all been of legal age. “I like Asian women but that is not a crime,” he insisted. This is not an opinion shared by the Philippines’ interior minister Jonvic Remulla, who said that “right now, all signs point to a possible sex offender of the grossest kind.” Further information, including forensic details, will be available within a week, and presumably the whole grim affair will continue after that.
It might therefore seem surprising that, in 2022, Meghan said in her equally wretched Netflix documentary, “I was a daddy’s girl all my life,” but perhaps the emphasis should be on the word “was.” Even before these revelations, her father seemed like a difficult figure, forever selling titbits of information about his daughter to make a few dollars. The fact that it has emerged that he possessed books with titles like Lewis Carroll Photographs of Children and Hollywood Lolitas: The Nymphet Syndrome in the Movies does not make him seem like a warm and sympathetic patriarch.
It remains to be seen what will happen to Thomas if the Philippines do decide to charge him with the possession of child sex material. Whatever occurs, however, Meghan’s fixation on her two main goals in life – family and privacy – now make far more sense than they did even a few days ago.
Many people, including readers of this piece and indeed Meghan’s husband Harry, will know what it is to have a difficult and dysfunctional family. Far fewer of us will have these dynamics played out across the international media, where intimate, even prurient details of horrendous events will be splashed out across the newspapers and internet alike. No doubt there will be further twists and turns and statements and intrigue for the foreseeable future. But before then, given everything that has happened, I feel deeply sorry for Meghan, as I would for anyone else who is in this deeply unpleasant and painful situation.
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