Two resort destinations on opposite sides of the world have long faced scrutiny over reports of child sexual exploitation. One Mexican lawmaker recently described the country as a “pedophile’s paradise.”
Now, the beach town of Rosarito in Mexico and the Philippine city of Cebu share another connection: both have been drawn into a multinational criminal investigation involving Meghan Markle’s estranged father.
Thomas Markle Sr, 82, was arrested in Florida on Friday on a federal child-pornography charge. According to First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli, the FBI allegedly found material in Markle’s Los Angeles storage units depicting child sexual abuse, including photographs that allegedly showed him with minor girls.
The arrest followed confirmation from authorities in Mexico and the Philippines that they had already opened inquiries after being alerted to alleged pornography caches in the two destinations where Markle spent much of his retirement.
One alleged cache was reportedly kept near Markle’s former clifftop residence in Rosarito, a town with a documented history of teenagers and younger children being trafficked for abuse by expatriates and sex tourists.
The second was allegedly discovered by his son, Thomas Markle Jr, at their former home in Cebu, Philippines.
Cebu has become notorious as a destination for some Western men seeking underage girls, according to two former child-sex-trafficking victims who spoke to Our News Outlet.
Markle has strongly denied any wrongdoing since reports of the alleged child-pornography cache first emerged. “I had no storage units in Rosarito!” he told Our News Outlet.
Thomas Markle, 82, is at the center of a multinational investigation after alleged child-pornography material linked to him was reportedly found in the Philippines and Mexico. He is pictured in Rosarito in 2018, after leaving the United States
Our News Outlet alerted the FBI after finding sexually explicit books, magazines and photographs—including images of Asian females who appear notably young—in a Mexican storage unit rented by Markle
Markle has not entered a plea to the federal charge. He was released and ordered to remain under house arrest at Maravida Senior Living in Lakeland, Florida, where agents arrested him Friday morning.
He will also be electronically monitored, most likely through a GPS ankle device fitted to his remaining leg.
As the investigations unfold, experts and survivors of exploitation say the alleged discoveries have highlighted the darker side of two international travel destinations.
Rosarito is about an hour from the US border at Tijuana and San Diego. Its relatively low cost of living has attracted a sizable community of American retirees, including Markle.
The town is also known as a party destination, where tourism has helped sustain a sex trade that includes a well-documented flow of trafficked teenagers and young girls sold at prices far below those in the United States.
Mexican Senator Laura Esquivel Torres spoke forcefully last month as lawmakers approved legislation aimed at ending child exploitation in tourist areas nationwide. “Pedophiles don’t come to Mexico by chance; they come because they… know Mexico is a pedophile’s paradise,” she said.
The US State Department’s 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report identifies child sexual exploitation by foreign travelers as a problem throughout Mexico, particularly in cities near the US border.
After Markle moved to Rosarito in 2015, a local newspaper reported several cases involving American tourists and expatriates arrested for exploiting minors.
In 2021, a Mexican anti-trafficking organization classified the Rosarito area as high-risk and said it had rescued more than 100 girls from sexual slavery.
There is no indication that Markle participated in human trafficking. However, Rosarito launched a crackdown shortly before he left the town in 2025.
“In a window of about three months, police started really making arrests. It got two, maybe three times riskier to pick up a minor,” an anti-trafficking advocate in Baja told Our News Outlet. The source requested anonymity, citing concerns about losing nonprofit funding.
Meghan Markle, pictured as a teenager, has been estranged from her father, Thomas Markle Sr, for years. He has repeatedly denied wrongdoing since reports of an alleged child-pornography cache became public late last month
Markle rented a storage unit in Rosarito beginning in 2017. He reportedly abandoned it after deciding to move to the Philippines and stopped paying rent in 2024.
Our reporters visited the unit last week and found magazines and books depicting the sexual abuse of children, along with loose photographs of naked Asian females who appeared notably young.
Several family keepsakes were also found among the material, apparently linking Markle to the contents.
Hours after Our News Outlet informed the FBI and published an exclusive report, Mexican sex-crimes investigators raided the unit and seized its contents. A witness said one agent visibly recoiled before muttering “Ay cabron,” an expression that roughly translates as “holy crap.”
Markle has described reports about a separate alleged child-pornography cache in the Philippines as “sick lies” fabricated by his son.
He has acknowledged paying for sex in the Philippines but insisted that none of the women involved was under 18.
“I like Asian women, but that is not a crime,” he told Our News Outlet last week.
The Philippines’ sex industry dates back to the Spanish colonial era and expanded under American rule, during the Japanese occupation and throughout the substantial US military presence after World War II.
MORE ON THIS: How Landlords Are Converting Tenants’ Parking Spaces Into Tiny Homes
About 20 boxes were found in the Rosarito storage unit, including some containing books about pedophilia and magazines depicting the sexual abuse of children
One undated photograph shows Markle on a bed with his arm around a young Asian female; both appear fully clothed. She appears alone and naked in several other images
By the late 20th century, reports had circulated in English-speaking countries about Filipino women and girls who spoke better English than those in competing sex-tourism destinations such as Thailand and Cambodia. That shared language made it easier for them to meet clients’ demands.
After the United States closed two Philippine military bases in the early 1990s, many female “hospitality workers” who had provided so-called “R&R” for American troops moved into tourist centers, particularly Cebu.
The island, roughly 350 miles southeast of Manila, developed a sex trade involving hotel escorts, karaoke hostesses, “girlie bar” dancers, massage-parlor workers, brothel employees and street-based sex workers.
In some cases, families have sold their daughters into sexual exploitation by acting as intermediaries or handing them over to pimps.
Anna, 34, a survivor of Cebu’s child-sex trade, told Our News Outlet that her mother and uncle arranged meetings with clients from the time she was 11.
“Total betrayal,” she said.
She said she endured more than a decade of sexual slavery before workers from a Catholic nonprofit helped her escape. According to Anna, two of her sisters and their daughters remain at risk of exploitation.
Anna had not heard about the alleged cache linked to Markle when she spoke to Our News Outlet. She said, however, that she was familiar with older white men who search online and in person for very young girls.
A paper plate marked “DARK WEB” in red ink, alongside several URLs, was found inside Thomas Markle’s rented storage unit in Rosarito, Mexico
Anna and another Cebu survivor described the typical alleged child abuser in the area as a white, middle-aged or older man who had traveled to Southeast Asia for sex and kept recordings or souvenirs from those trips.
“Justice will come for them. That is my dream,” Anna said.
Markle moved to the Southeast Asian nation with his son, Thomas Markle Jr, last year. He initially stayed at a three-star Cebu hotel next to a bar popular with young local women seeking relationships with expatriate men.
“These people are often single mothers, or women from middle-class families who speak good English but have fallen on hard times,” a barman told Our News Outlet.
“They are looking for a rich old man who is going to die soon.”
By 2025, much of Cebu’s child-sex trade had moved online, involving livestreamed abuse funded by money sent from abroad. That shift has helped make the province a global center for online child exploitation, pushing children from the streets into private cybersex operations that are difficult for police to locate.
Men seeking in-person meetings with so-called “PYTs”—a term used in pedophile circles to mean “pretty young things”—are increasingly finding fewer opportunities.
The International Justice Mission, an anti-trafficking organization, reported that the number of trafficked children in Cebu’s bars and brothels had fallen by 72 percent by 2024.
Rosarito, about an hour from the US border at Tijuana and San Diego, is known as a party destination where tourists have helped fuel a sex trade
“The only reason they’re abusing a child and livestreaming it is because someone in the US is willing to pay for that abuse,” John Tanagho of IJM told CNN last month. A 2020 report from the organization ranked the Philippines first and Mexico second worldwide for online child-exploitation cases referred to police.
An FBI official who investigates child-sex trafficking told Our News Outlet that anyone seeking in-person abuse in Cebu may have missed the opportunity.
“Any American pervert who swings that way may as well stay home on his laptop,” the source said.
When Markle left Cebu for Florida last spring to receive medical treatment and recover from a leg amputation, he allegedly left behind the material his son, 60, later reported to authorities in the Philippines.
Thomas Jr, who was reportedly recently cut off financially by his father, said he found four cardboard boxes containing hundreds—and possibly thousands—of child-sexual-abuse images on photographs, DVDs and computer files.
He said the material included a video and dozens of still images showing girls as young as toddlers performing sex acts. Thomas Jr described the discovery as “the most sickening child abuse imaginable” and said he was so “horrified” that he had “no option” but to report it to local police and the FBI.
The Philippines’ interior minister subsequently said the evidence appeared to identify Markle as “a possible sex offender of the grossest kind.”
Markle now faces the US justice system after the FBI said it found alleged child-pornography material—including sexually explicit photographs that allegedly showed him abusing minor girls—in his Los Angeles storage units.
Federal agents arrested the 82-year-old at Maravida Senior Living in Lakeland, Florida, on Friday morning after the alleged material was reportedly discovered in two units he had rented for nearly 20 years.
Markle did not enter a plea during his initial court appearance. He was released on bond Friday afternoon and ordered to remain under house arrest at the care facility.
