Why did the Metropolitan Police appear to take no further action over the letter? It remains one of the most troubling unanswered questions in the disturbing saga surrounding Thomas Markle Snr and the allegations made against him.
The letter in question was written by Mr Markle Snr’s late first wife, Roslyn Loveless, and handed to the Met in 2019. In it, she accused her former husband of being a serial child abuser.
Police shared the contents with Meghan Markle, presumably because she had become a member of the British Royal Family after marrying Prince Harry the previous year. But beyond notifying Meghan, the force appears to have taken no steps to alert overseas authorities that might have been able to investigate the claims. Why?
Of course, everyone is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. At this stage, there is no way to establish whether Mrs Markle’s allegations were founded.
Mr Markle Snr strongly denies the accusations, describing them as ‘sick lies’. Nevertheless, if the Met considered the letter significant enough to share with the Duchess, it is difficult to understand why the allegations were not referred to an agency capable of examining them properly.
That apparent contradiction has fuelled intense speculation. Some have even asked whether a ‘nothing-to-see-here’ cover-up took place in 2019, involving either the police or, more controversially, the Palace.
There may, however, be an entirely innocent explanation.
Roslyn Loveless’s handwritten letter was sent to the Met’s Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, a unit focused on stalkers and ‘fixated individuals’ who target public figures. Her surname was, in this context, an unfortunate coincidence. She was described as a troubled woman with alcohol problems who died two years ago.
Why did the Metropolitan Police seemingly take no action over the letter? It is one of the most perplexing questions in the troubling saga involving Thomas Markle Snr, writes AN Wilson
The letter reached the Met 44 years after Loveless’s marriage to Mr Markle Snr had ended. Her daughter, Meghan’s half-sister Samantha, 61, later described her as ‘not credible’ and motivated by ‘hatred and bitterness’.
Perhaps the assessment centre reached the same conclusion as Samantha and decided there was no basis for further action. If so, why was Meghan informed in the first place?
And regardless of how credible Loveless was considered to be, her letter reportedly alleged that Mr Markle Snr—who again denies the claims—had travelled to Thailand and the Philippines to have sex with minors.
If there was even a remote possibility that children were being abused, that should have been the overriding concern. The police would surely have had a responsibility to investigate or pass the information to those who could.
Jim Gamble, an international campaigner against child sexual abuse, told Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday that the Met’s failure to share the information with overseas authorities may have left children facing ‘extended exposure’ to possible abuse during the seven years since the letter was submitted.
Gamble, the former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, said the decision was ‘really difficult to understand’ because the Met had apparently considered the letter important enough to disclose to Meghan and the royal protection team.
He said: ‘If information comes to you about someone in a foreign jurisdiction who may pose a threat to children, there is an established process. You would expect a UK police force to share that information.’
‘I would have expected the Metropolitan Police to approach the FBI Legat—the legal attaché at the embassy—and say: “This has not been proven; it is an allegation. You may want to examine it because American authorities could have additional information and may be able to establish whether it can be corroborated.”’
Police shared the letter’s contents with Meghan, presumably because she had become a member of the Royal Family after marrying Prince Harry the previous year
Others share that concern. Dai Davies, the former head of Scotland Yard’s Royal Protection Command, said he was ‘gobsmacked’ that the Met had not contacted other law-enforcement agencies about the allegations.
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‘I’m frankly astounded that, after receiving this material, they did not contact other relevant forces,’ he said. ‘I believe they had a duty of care not only to Meghan but also to any alleged victims, and that the claims should have been investigated.’
Let’s consider the Met’s failure to act for a moment. It means that if the allegations were true, the supposed perpetrator has had a further seven years in
which to prey upon children in different parts of the world, by meeting them, or by watching them online.
We are told that hundreds, thousands, of pieces of evidence have been removed from Thomas Markle Snr’s home in the Philippines, after purportedly being discovered by his son, Thomas Jnr.
Obviously, we cannot comment on what those pieces of evidence are with any confidence. But within the poisonously-divided Markle family, furious rows are now blazing over them.
Meghan’s half-sister Samantha has accused Thomas Markle Jnr of concocting the story in order to make money.
Eventually, the truth will out, however. And, whatever it is, I am bound to say it is not looking good for the royals.
Consider the allegations. We are either talking about Roslyn Loveless and Thomas Markle Jnr telling lies on a truly prodigious scale. Or about a habit of disgusting criminality stretching over decades. And this allegedly perpetrated by the father-in-law of the man who is fifth in line to the throne. Meghan’s own personal response to these claims, therefore, must also be subjected to the most careful forensic scrutiny.
In 2022, three years after the Met showed her the letter full of allegations against her father, Meghan said in her and Harry’s Netflix documentary that she had always been ‘a Daddy’s girl’
In 2022, three full years after the Met showed her the letter full of allegations against her father, she said in her and Harry’s Netflix documentary that she had always been ‘a daddy’s girl’.
At the time, it might have seemed trivial. Now, in the light of our knowledge about the letter, it is something much more serious than tittle-tattle.
If she had thought back in 2019 there was some possibility – even the faintest – that the allegations made by her father’s first wife were true, what did she do about it? Why, if she thought her father was a dangerous predator of children, did she not make these rumours public? Or at least urge the police to pursue the matter?
Perhaps, privately, she did. But the questions keep coming. Questions that may yet turn into a very serious matter, both for our police, and for our Royal Family, and hence for our entire constitutional monarchy and its future.
It simply beggars belief that these allegations were somehow forgotten about, or that they sank to the bottom of some incompetent junior copper’s in-tray. Which again raises the notion that they were deliberately suppressed.
We cannot say – yet – who might have suppressed them, or demanded their suppression. Was it some clodhopping fool in the Met itself, who smelt big trouble? An idiotic royal flunkey, some secretary in the royal household, who put pressure on the police not to embarrass the Royal Family less than a year after Prince Harry and Meghan had won all hearts with their beautiful wedding in St George’s Chapel, Windsor?
For their part, the police are ‘reviewing the handling of this matter in 2019’. The Palace, meanwhile, told Our News Outlet it is ‘not commenting on this matter which is personal to the Sussexes’.
Whatever the case, the sooner we get the full truth, the better for everyone.
The crimes alleged are of far greater magnitude than anything of which Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor stands accused, and the damage the story could cause our monarchy is infinitely worse.
