Before their relationship broke down beyond repair, the Duchess of Sussex often spoke warmly about her father. Meghan Markle repeatedly portrayed herself as the beloved centre of Thomas Markle’s world.
In the Netflix documentary she made with Prince Harry, she reinforced that image, recalling: “I’ve been a Daddy’s Girl my whole life.”
That is unlikely to be a phrase Meghan uses again soon. Her 82-year-old father, Thomas Markle, is facing allegations that a large collection of “sickening” child sexual abuse images was found at his home in the Philippines. The claims were reportedly brought to police by his 60-year-old son, Thomas Markle Jr. Thomas Sr has denied the accusations, calling them “a bunch of lies”.
The timing of Meghan’s Netflix comments is particularly striking. She made them in 2022, four years after she says the Metropolitan Police received a letter containing “troubling and disturbing allegations” about her father. Meghan has said those concerns led her to stop Thomas Sr from meeting her children, explaining that she did so “to protect them”.
Against that background, her description of herself as a devoted daughter sounds difficult to reconcile. If she believed her father posed a danger, why refer to him at all—and why choose such an affectionate expression when looking back? The circumstances surrounding the family dispute remain unclear.
What has emerged instead is a deeply unpleasant family drama marked by rival accusations, bitter disputes and revelations involving several members of the Markle family. Thomas Jr’s allegations have already been rejected by his half-sister, Samantha Markle, who accused him of fabricating the claims for financial gain.
“There is no merit in these disgusting allegations whatsoever and my brother is disgusting for making them up,” she told Our News Outlet. “He wants to destroy our dad. Shame on him.”
The Markle family has been at the centre of controversy before. In the year leading up to Meghan’s wedding, Thomas Jr—who was living in a small Oregon town—was reported to have pulled a gun on his fiancée, Darlene, during a drunken argument. Around the same period, one of his sons, Tyler, who grows marijuana legally in Oregon, reportedly considered profiting from the family connection by creating a potent cannabis variety named Markle’s Sparkle.
A young Meghan with her father Thomas during happier times, when he took her to tap-dancing and ballet lessons. Afterwards, they would follow their family tradition of sharing a club sandwich and fruit smoothie.
Whatever the outcome of the allegations surrounding the alleged images, one part of the story is well established: Meghan and her father were once extremely close. As a child, she would kiss the television screen when Thomas’s name appeared in the credits of the programme where he worked as a lighting director.
She also visited him on set whenever possible, and the pair sometimes went fishing together. On weekends, Thomas took her to tap-dancing and ballet classes, followed by their familiar meal of a club sandwich and fruit smoothie. For Meghan, those years represented a much happier chapter.
Thomas encouraged his daughter to pursue her ambitions, telling her that he wanted her to grow up and “have so much”. It is easy to understand why Meghan remembered him as a supportive father who affectionately called her “Bean”. He also used the nickname “Buckaroo”, a Californian-Spanish term meaning cowboy.
Their closeness gradually changed as Meghan became an adult, but she remained affectionate towards him until her 2018 wedding. Their estrangement followed Thomas’s decision to work secretly with a paparazzi photographer to stage a series of photographs—despite Prince Harry’s public appeals for the media to give his future father-in-law privacy.
Meghan then cut contact with her father, and the two never spoke again. Thomas publicly complained about the situation, while critics argued that Meghan had treated him too harshly and should attempt a reconciliation. Even some of her strongest detractors, however, may have felt sympathy for her after the latest allegations emerged in the Philippines.
For Meghan, the claims must raise painful questions about the father and childhood she once remembered with such certainty. A deeply familiar part of her past has suddenly been placed under scrutiny.
The seriousness of the allegations was underscored when a source close to the Sussexes appeared to link them directly to Meghan’s decision to remain estranged from her father. The intervention was delivered with such force that it prompted questions about whether the family crisis was being used to support the couple’s public narrative.
“Now maybe people will finally understand why she has had nothing to do with her father since 2018,” the insider said.
Only hours later, reports suggested that Thomas Markle might have been set up, raising the possibility that the initial claims were false. The situation became even more complicated when it emerged that allegations about his supposed interest in child sexual abuse material may not have been entirely new to Meghan.
Her statement did not specify when the letter concerning her father was sent, when its contents were passed on to her, or when she personally read it. However, the wording appeared to suggest that the information reached her in 2018, the year of her wedding.
If Meghan already knew her father faced such grave allegations, there was no obvious public sign of it at the time. Just two years earlier, she had published an emotional tribute to Thomas for Father’s Day.
In it, she recalled ‘so many moments with my dad… his commitment he made to lighting my high school musicals so that they felt as grand as a Broadway Show.
‘The blood, sweat and tears this man (who came from so little in a small town in Pennsylvania, where Christmas stockings were filled with oranges, and dinners were potatoes and Spam) invested in my future so that I could grow up and have so much.
‘He helped me turn my bathroom into a darkroom when I was 12 because I wanted to be a photographer. He put gas in my car when I went from audition to audition trying to make it as an actress. He is the person who believed in this grand dream of mine well before I could even see it as a possibility.
‘He taught me to write thank you notes, to always arrive early, to drink Arnold Palmers [a non- alcoholic cocktail of lemonade and iced tea, popular in the US], to find my light when I’m on camera… and beyond. And that, right there, is my point: my dad taught me to find my light.’ And it was always her intention that he would be the one to walk her down the aisle.
In the months before the wedding, all had seemed well between them – even if Meghan wasn’t keen on him making a speech. When Mr Markle told Harry on the phone that he would ‘like to make a little speech’ at the wedding, the prince responded: ‘You will have to talk to Meghan.’
According to Mr Markle, when he spoke to his daughter, she replied there was ‘no room’ in the ceremony for a speech by her father. Mr Markle said: ‘I was going to recount the funny story about how she broke the news to me about dating Harry. ‘Daddy, I’ve met a man… Daddy, he’s English… Daddy, he’s a prince’.’
After the staged photos scandal, Mr Markle felt too embarrassed to show his face in Windsor. And the matter was put beyond doubt when he suffered two heart attacks with just days to go.
Text messages from Meghan made plain her concern, even if she was irritated he was blabbing to the media. One read: ‘I’ve been reaching out to you all weekend but you’re not taking any of our calls or replying to any texts. Do you need help? What hospital are you at?’
In another, sent on May 17, 2018 – two days before the wedding – she said: ‘Please can I ask that you stop talking to any press. You haven’t returned any of our 20+ calls since we all spoke on Saturday morning; which only adds to the hurt you’ve been causing. We aren’t angry but we do really need to speak to u. Love M and H.’
Then, a group of five women – the duchess’s inner circle –resolved to ‘speak the truth’ about their friend to an American celebrity magazine.
It has been widely reported that the resulting article which appeared in People in February 2019 was sanctioned by the duchess herself, something that was never denied.
Certainly, it seemed inconceivable that this well-meaning quintet would run to a magazine favoured by Meghan to ‘set the record straight’ and criticise her father without her blessing.
What is noteworthy about the article now is that it conveyed Meghan’s desire to repair their relationship.
Why, you might ask, would she wish to do so if she was worried about the apparent threat he posed to her son, who was born just a few months later in May 2019?
Meghan visited her father on set whenever she got the chance and even kissed the screen when his name came up on the credits of the TV show on which he was lighting director
One friend is quoted by People as saying: ‘He writes her a really long letter… and he closes it by requesting a photo op with her. And she feels like, ‘That’s the opposite of what I’m saying. I’m telling you I don’t want to communicate through the media, and you’re asking me to communicate through the media. Did you hear anything I said?’ It’s almost like they’re ships passing.
‘He knows how to get in touch with her. Her telephone number hasn’t changed. He’s never called; he’s never texted.’
So by 2019 then, Meghan, it seems, was more than alive to the possibility of reconciliation.
Where then does this leave yesterday’s statement in which she described the child sex allegations as ‘more sickening’ than was possible to imagine?
In it, Meghan added: ‘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.’
She said that when she received the letter outlining allegations against her father, she was ‘given assurance that these were being investigated’.
Here’s where the saga takes another curious twist.
Her statement appeared to catch the Met unawares. The force could not readily confirm Meghan’s account of the letter being passed to her, although one should note that she did not specify that the police did so. Perhaps it was the original letter-writer, or someone else.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: ‘We are aware of media reports that officers from the Met’s Royalty and Specialist Protection Command were involved in the passing on of a letter in 2018. We are undertaking enquiries internally in an effort to confirm this.’
Meanwhile in Manila, the Undersecretary for the Philippines Department of Justice, Nicholas Ty, told the BBC that ‘the matter is currently being investigated’ by an anti-human trafficking and child sexual-exploitation task force.
Police have already seized Mr Markle’s computer to conduct a comprehensive digital forensic examination. Investigators are analysing the data to determine the full scope and extent of his alleged criminal activities, with a minister saying it would take one week to get the forensic results.
Before then, we can doubtless expect more twists and turns in between.
