Meghan’s New Victim Strategy Exposed
A longtime royal correspondent tore into the Duchess of Sussex over her father’s scandal.
Meghan Markle has found a way to make her father’s disturbing scandal all about herself, a veteran royal correspondent has said.
Rob Jobson, dubbed “the godfather of royal reporting,” tore into the Duchess of Sussex, 45, over her statements following the bombshell news that her estranged father, Thomas Markle Sr., 82, is under criminal investigation in the Philippines over alleged possession of child sexual abuse material.
Philippine police obtained a search warrant after Thomas Markle Jr. told authorities that he found “hundreds, if not thousands” of troubling images stored in four large boxes in his father’s home in the city of Cebu.
The Duchess of Sussex later said in a statement that she was “deeply distressed” by the news. She also revealed that, in 2018, she obtained a letter sent to the Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection making “disturbing allegations” against her father.
“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,” she said. “I trusted that the authorities were doing the same for other families.”
Jobson said Markle could have gone public with those allegations sooner.
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“There’s been so many opportunities for the Markle camp to have actually put this back into the public domain,” he told Tom Sykes on The Royalist podcast.
“I just don’t buy this, this ‘Poor me’ thing from Meghan Markle,” he said. “I think that she is utilizing this horrible story to try to make her in some way look like the victim of a media campaign against her. Now I think that’s a rather shoddy—slightly contrived, to say the very least—way of doing this.”
Harry and Meghan’s return to the U.K. has been marked by drama, but this one initially drew public sympathy.
Annabel Lee-Ellis/via REUTERS
Sykes, for his part, said the public could have pieced together why Markle has been estranged from her father for years—even without a statement from her.
“If she’d said nothing, people could have made their mind up and said, ‘You know, actually, maybe, maybe we’ve got this slightly wrong.’ And then that would have been that,” Jobson said.
“But no, it’s been turned into this sort of drama. Why are we surprised? Another drama with her at the heart of it. And, you know, how many of these dramas have we had in the few weeks—which seems like an eternity since they’ve been back in the U.K.—the British royal family’s narrative has completely gone out the window. And it’s all been about these two.”
Meghan has explained why she has ignored Thomas Markle's previous pleas to meet his grandchildren.
ITV/ Good Morning Britain
Archewell, the charitable organization launched by Markle and Prince Harry, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.
A source close to the couple earlier told NBC News that she decided not to speak out publicly about the allegations years ago because they were unsubstantiated at the time.
“When she was made aware of these allegations in 2018 after they were reported to the police, they remained just that — allegations,” the source said. “To have repeated them publicly at that stage would not only have potentially exposed her to civil action for making unsubstantiated claims, but she had also been advised that doing so could jeopardize any subsequent investigation.”
Meanwhile, Markle Sr. blasted his son’s accusations as “sick lies” in a statement to the Daily Mail, calling them “the worst thing anyone could accuse me of.”
The FBI has said it was “aware of the allegations and will provide support, as appropriate, to the Philippine authorities. We will also investigate any related allegations of federal violations of U.S. law.”
Join veteran royal correspondent Tom Sykes in the throne room to find out how the secret world of the palace really operates—every bit of royal tea you could need. New Royalist podcasts will be released every Tuesday on YouTube, and the next day on all podcast platforms.
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