The news, when it broke last night, was undeniably eye-catching. Thomas Markle, the estranged father of Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, was reported to have been in the possession of thousands of images of child sexual abuse, which were discovered at his home in the Philippines. His son, the imaginatively named Thomas Markle Jr., told the British newspaper The Sun that “When I found this material, I was horrified and I had no option but to report my dad. I have supported, cared for him and helped him for years – but that stops now. I won’t speak to my father ever again unless I’m called to give evidence against him.”
Meghan herself went further. This morning, she issued a statement saying that:
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. In 2018, a letter was sent to the Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection. That letter was subsequently shared with me. It made troubling and disturbing allegations against my father and I was given assurances that these were being investigated.
She went on to say that:
I hope it can now be understood that, despite certain media publications’ distortion over the years, any distance from my father and my choice to not allow him to have contact with our children, was for one reason: to protect them. I trusted that the authorities were doing the same for other families. Although the breadth of what has now been uncovered is more sickening than one could ever imagine, my sincerest hope is that justice will be fully served and that the priority remains the safety and protection of innocent children.
The Markle clan are an astonishingly fractured family whose estrangements make the Windsors look positively harmonious
All very grim. Yet the story is more complex than the splash originally suggested. While Thomas Jr. and Meghan may be in no doubt as to their father’s guilt, his daughter Samantha has suggested that the narrative – which has so far not resulted in Thomas Markle’s arrest or being charged – is a fabricated one. She told the Daily Mail that “There is no merit in these disgusting allegations whatsoever and my brother is disgusting for making them up. Shame on him.” Samantha went a step further, saying that the computers where this child abuse material was discovered were in a locked basement that her father would have had no access to, and said “Dad had no access to those computers for two years. Who knows who could have had access to them? I don’t believe any of it. Anyone could have set dad up.”
The FBI are said to have begun an investigation into the allegations, and the evidence has been taken to Cebu City Department of Justice. No doubt there will be updates and further stories being fed to the newspapers, from both sides, over the coming months. Yet what this goes to prove – leaving aside any issue of Markle Sr’s guilt or innocence – is that the Markle clan themselves are an astonishingly fractured and dysfunctional family whose fighting and estrangements make the antics of the Windsors look positively harmonious. The well-known poor relationship between Meghan and her father, who has never met her husband, let alone his grandchildren, can now be explained in terms that have never been brought into the public eye before, and the subsequent FBI probe into Thomas’s behavior – which, in her telling, has now stretched back at least eight years – will be scrutinized and reported as closely as everything else that has gone on with his family.
Thomas has often been accused of profiteering from his famous daughter, giving emotive (and well-paid) interviews to the press in which he has variously said that Meghan would be nothing without his tutelage and influence and that she and Harry are “lost souls” who have been damaging the Royal Family with their behavior. Perhaps there might have been some at Buckingham Palace who would quietly have been thanking him for his comments. Today, however, with this embarrassing and unsettling story coming to light, nobody is likely to wish to take his side, even tacitly. Like so much else in the world of Meghan Markle, this looks like it will carry on dominating front pages and discussion for a long time to come.
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