The allegations that exploded within the estranged family of the Duchess of Sussex this past week are heartbreaking – and deeply disturbing. They also dramatically recast the long-running narrative that Meghan Markle abandoned her father and half-siblings. Her whole life and identity have been ripped apart in the most public way, and yet, even after the Sussexes returned to the U.K. earlier this fall, the coverage remains as polarized as ever.
The story has taken some nasty twists and turns. According to Britain’s The Sun, Meghan’s estranged father, Thomas Markle Sr., has been accused by her stepbrother, Thomas Markle Jr., of possessing “hundreds, if not thousands” of child sex-abuse images, which Markle Jr. says he discovered at his father’s home in the Philippines. Markle Sr. has denied the allegation and has not been charged, though an investigation in the Philippines is now ongoing. And the Daily Mail has referred to the FBI their discovery of a cache of illegal and exploitative images involving minors found in a storage facility that Markle Sr. abandoned in Mexico – where he lived for several years before moving to the Philippines.
Meghan swiftly put out a statement to Newsweek, saying she was “deeply distressed by the news that has come to light,” and that her thoughts were “with any children who may have been harmed.” People magazine also reported that friends had spoken about her distress.
She went on to say that she had received a letter from the Metropolitan Police and Royalty Specialist Protection branch in 2018 (the branch later confirmed it to be 2019) outlining similar allegations about her father. The letter was later reported to have been sent to the branch by Markle Sr.’s first wife. “I hope it can now be understood that, despite certain media publications’ distortion over the years, any distance from my father and my choice not to allow him to have contact with our children was for one reason: to protect them,” Meghan said. The Guardian reports that The Met has now referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct for failing to pass on the information to overseas agencies that would have had jurisdiction. The Duchess said, in her statement, that she was assured the allegations would be investigated. But she has faced criticism in the British press for apparently not following up or going public. The revelation that this information was shared with the Duchess during a period which she described – in later media appearances – as one of the darkest in her life, led the anti-Sussex punditry pack to also criticize the couple for only blaming her treatment by The Firm and the British tabloids for her despair. In his memoir Spare and in interviews, Prince Harry also placed Meghan’s estrangement from her father solely at the feet of the press. Still, there’s likely much more complexity behind the scenes.
In late 2025, according to a report in The Sun, Markle sent a “final” letter to her father, who was in hospital in the Philippines following the amputation of his leg after a blood clot. In it, she reportedly told him she knew of the sexual-abuse allegations and that he would never see his grandchildren, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, who are sixth and seventh in the line of succession to the British throne. According to the report, the Duchess’s representatives had hand-delivered the letter to her father’s hospital bed, and asked him to sign to confirm receipt of the letter. The proceedings were filmed at Meghan’s request.
It is hard not to feel for Meghan in this situation. She has been bullied about her supposed abandonment of her father since before her wedding, only for it to later emerge that there was a very valid reason for their estrangement. And yet, in the eyes of a certain segment of the British press, Meghan can’t win. There was an immediate hullabaloo around what she knew and when (the 2018 versus January 2019 discrepancy), during a period when she was pregnant and very busy, working as a Royal and under intense press scrutiny.
Sexual abuse and pedophilia are far more prevalent than many care to acknowledge. The British Royal Family has been dealing with allegations raised in connection with the Epstein scandal against former Prince Andrew (who denied wrongdoing, settling a civil lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre for a reported £12 million, with no admission of guilt). In a separate incident, Dave Matthews, the father-in-law of Pippa Middleton (Catherine, the Princess of Wales’ sister), was investigated in France over allegations of rape involving a minor. Those charges were not pursued.
The Royals all live under a huge spotlight, and the glare extends in concentric circles to the people around them. Remember Kate’s party-friendly Uncle Gary? The Billy Carter good ol’ boy of Britain? There are oodles of scandals over things large and small, from flower girl tights to Tampon-gate. But the accusations against Markle Sr. are of a different magnitude.
This must be a life-and-soul-destroying level of devastation for Meghan. It must have been especially hard for her as, prior to her wedding preparation in 2018 and the paparazzi scandals, she often spoken of her love for her father. Indeed, in a clip that appeared in her 2022 documentary, she lionized him, calling herself “a Daddy’s Girl my whole life.” She also wrote of their bond in her now-defunct publication, The Tig. And, in a 2015 speech at the UN, she praised him, saying at the time “… we need more men like my father, who championed my 11-year-old self to stand up for what is right.”
This week, Meghan’s niece, Noelle Rasmussen (daughter of estranged half-sister Samantha Markle, also long estranged from her mother), spoke to The Telegraph about her own feelings on the matter, saying the allegations were “not a surprise.”
It is harder to feel sympathy for Meghan’s half-siblings, who have been on the sidelines heckling and cashing in on the Duchess, selling stories to the tabloids and peddling books. But again, this is – at heart – an entire family tragedy.
Since Harry and Meghan returned to England earlier this fall, the British press has been stirring things up. It has become a free-for-all, from digging into the children’s schooling and security issues to a Harry-and-Meghan-versus-The-Firm dynamic. Whose walkabouts get more coverage? Are the Sussexes setting up a rival court? Who is pushing whom off the front page?
The long-running and ugly Andrew problem ought to have made the senior Royals more sensitive to the Sussexes’ distress. It appears at this time that the Royals are determined to put their heads down and keep plugging away at their official duties. Even as Harry has been professing his desire for reconciliation in interviews (most notably in a filmed GQ sit-down), over the past weeks, the Palace has kept calm and carried on, with a state dinner for the Sultan of Oman and King Charles III’s high-wire Commonwealth trip to the Caribbean, where republicanism has taken root.
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Meghan has become an avatar for other people’s displaced passions: she is in equal parts vilified and admired by different camps, both very set in their views. But the passion seems out of proportion to reality. Meanwhile, her lifestyle brand, As Ever, continues to post holiday launches, and news broke of her new gig as co-host of Junior MasterChef Australia in 2027. Then, the Sussex family jetted off for a school-break holiday. This is Meghan’s version of soldiering on amid the maelstrom. And yes, the many high-profile defences and accusations Harry and Megan have made in their interviews, their documentary, and Harry’s memoir, have added baking powder to the vinegar and caused everything to froth over.
But the allegations against her father are too big, and Meghan deserves to be left alone to work through what must be a bucketful of turmoil to process. With all of our sympathies.
