‘DEEPLY DISTRESSED’

Meghan Responds to Shocking Claims About Estranged Dad

The duchess has said she does not allow her father near her children “to protect them.”

Meghan Markle has said that British police were told about “troubling and disturbing allegations” against her father in 2018.

Her comments came after Thomas Markle, 82, was reported to police in the Philippines by his own son for owning a vast hoard of child sex abuse images.

Meghan married Harry on May 19, 2018, and her father did not attend the wedding, saying he had suffered a heart attack.

HORRIFYING

Meghan Markle’s Estranged Dad at Center of Disturbing Probe

Tom Sykes

The Sun revealed that her estranged father, Thomas Markle Sr., is under investigation by police in the Philippines over an alleged hoard of child sex abuse images, after being reported to the authorities by his own son, Thomas Jr.

In a statement Friday, Meghan, 45, said: “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. It made troubling and disturbing allegations against my father and I was given assurances that these were being investigated.

“I hope it can now be understood that, despite certain media publications’ distortion over the years, any distance from my father and my choice to not allow him to have contact with our children, was for one reason: to protect them.

“I trusted that the authorities were doing the same for other families. Although the breadth of what has now been uncovered is more sickening than one could ever imagine, my sincerest hope is that justice will be fully served and that the priority remains the safety and protection of innocent children.”

The Sun’s Nick Parker was with Thomas Jr. in Cebu as he lodged a sworn statement with specialist child abuse officers, and The Sun’s account is detailed.

Thomas Jr., 60, told police he found “hundreds, if not thousands” of abuse images and videos in four large cardboard boxes of his father’s belongings, abandoned in Cebu when Thomas Sr., 82, was flown back to the United States in May following the stroke and blood clot that cost him his left leg last December.

He told The Sun: “When I found this material I was horrified and I had no option but to report my dad. I have supported, cared for him and helped him for years, but that stops now. I won’t speak to my father ever again unless I’m called to give evidence against him.”

According to the paper, the discovery was accidental. Thomas Jr. was rummaging through the boxes for a spare phone for his girlfriend’s father when a video of naked young girls played on an old LG handset.

He told a friend afterwards that he was left “a shaking wreck,” saying: “What I saw made me sick to the stomach. All this stuff was just dumped on me and I didn’t know what to do. I knew right away it was highly illegal and would land me in jail for a long time if I didn’t get rid of it. I felt betrayed, angry and disgusted, and realized I had to report him.”

The Sun reports that one of the images on the phone appeared to be a photograph of a laptop screen taken in a room Thomas Jr. recognized from his father’s former home in Rosarito, Mexico.

On July 10, he reported what he had found to the FBI’s tip line, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Pennsylvania state police, where his father was then living. He heard nothing back. After weeks of silence, he retrieved the boxes from storage and, with a local IT technician, went through the rest, including three computer hard drives.

“There was an unbelievable amount of stuff,” he told his friend, according to The Sun. “Old family home movies on VHS cassettes, books, nine mobile phones, along with the Emmy Awards he won for his TV work. But there were also many more worrying items which I’d never seen before. Old books that turned out to be full of naked little girls.”

He went on: “Then the technician helped me turn on the first hard drive and I gasped when all of the icons suddenly appeared. His desktop was full of row upon row of thumbnail pictures linking to the most sickening child abuse imaginable. The worst of the worst.”

The Sun says the alleged material included images of very young children, further images stored between the pages of an antique photography book (the paper names it as a volume of Lewis Carroll’s nude studies of children), developed film negatives, and innocent-looking art books whose covers concealed page after page of abuse imagery.

It reports that some of the files sat on the same hard drive as Thomas Sr.’s professional CV, listing his three Emmys and old Hollywood address, and a downloaded clip of Meghan’s 2015 speech to the United Nations.

The Sun reports that investigators from the Philippines’ Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking have appointed a task force run by the Women and Children’s Protection Centre, that Thomas Jr. has agreed to surrender the boxes for forensic examination at the Cebu City Department of Justice, and that he was due to hand them over accompanied by lawyers acting on the task force’s instructions.

A source close to the case in Cebu told the paper: “An FBI agent has already requested the contact details of investigators leading the case in the Philippines. Thomas Markle Snr is a US citizen, he is currently living in the US and may be linked to alleged offences committed on US soil. There is a strong precedent for cases in circumstances like this to be investigated by the FBI.”

Officers from the task force declined to comment to The Sun. No charges have been brought.

Thomas Sr. is in a nursing and rehabilitation center in Florida, where he is being supported by his elder daughter Samantha, 60, who has denied the allegations and said Thomas Jr has fabricated the story to make money.

Thomas Jr. was arrested in Oregon in 2017 after police said he held a gun to his girlfriend’s head during a drunken argument. In January 2019, he was arrested for drunk driving and his father told TMZ his son had “a serious problem and he needs help,” and Samantha added that his drinking had nothing to do with Meghan because “he always drank.”

Want more royal gossip, scoops and scandal? Follow all Tom Sykes’ reporting at The Royalist on Substack or listen to The Royalist podcast on YouTube.

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