Thomas Markle Sr. denies the allegations, now under investigation in the Philippines, Mexico and by the FBI. No charges have been reported.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, said on Oct. 23 that she had kept her estranged father away from her children to protect them, after a British tabloid reported allegations that he possessed child sexual abuse images, the Associated Press reported.
Thomas Markle Sr., 82, denies the allegations, and no charges have been reported against him in any country. Philippine police said on Nov. 4 that devices handed over by his son contained abuse material, but had yet to establish who was responsible.
Meghan Says She Acted to Protect Her Children
Meghan’s half-brother, Thomas Markle Jr., told The Sun he found hundreds, possibly thousands, of the images in boxes at their father’s former home in Cebu, in the Philippines. He said he reported them to local police and the FBI.
“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,” Meghan said in a statement, NBC News reported.
She said an earlier letter to London’s Metropolitan Police had made troubling allegations about her father, and that keeping him from Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, “was for one reason: to protect them.”
“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,” she said, AP reported.
Markle Jr. told The Sun: “I won’t speak to my father ever again unless I’m called to give evidence against him.”
His father denied the allegations to the Daily Mail, saying “these terrible lies are being made against me with no proof.” His daughter Samantha Markle told the Mail “there is no merit in these disgusting allegations whatsoever.”
Meghan has been estranged from her father since before her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry, a rift that fed years of media scrutiny of Meghan. The couple moved back to the U.K. in August.
Investigations Widen Across Three Countries
“Our Anti-Trafficking and Anti-OSAEC (online sexual abuse and exploitation of children) task force in Cebu is currently investigating the matter,” Philippine Justice Undersecretary Nicholas Ty told Reuters.
The FBI said it “is aware of the allegations and will provide support, as appropriate, to the Philippine authorities.”
On Nov. 4, the Philippine National Police said three memory cards and a cell phone turned over by Markle Jr. contained child sexual abuse material, AFP reported. Police chief Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. urged caution.
“It is not enough to simply come across some materials and immediately draw conclusions,” he said. “We have to establish where these came from, who may be responsible, and whether Philippine laws were violated.”
Mexican authorities also searched a storage unit Markle rented in Rosarito and took computer equipment, AFP reported. Markle told the Daily Mail he knew of no such unit.
In London, the Met said it received the letter in January 2019, not 2018 as Meghan recalled, and passed it to the couple’s office. The letter contained “a number of claims about alleged offending outside the United Kingdom,” the force said, according to AP.
“The details of the allegations in the letter were not shared with other law enforcement agencies,” Commander Adam Slonecki said, according to PA Media.
What Happens Next
On Oct. 30, the Independent Office for Police Conduct said “an independent investigation is required” into the Met’s failure to pass the allegations to overseas authorities at the time. The force has said it will now refer the letter’s allegations to law enforcement agencies abroad.
Philippine Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla said police would take legal action against Markle if they found enough evidence to charge him.
Markle has said he would welcome a forensic examination. “If there is anything bad on there, it was put there by someone else,” he told the Mail on Sunday, PA reported.
Child Abuse Stays in the Public Eye
The Markle investigation is a separate case, and no reporting connects it to Jeffrey Epstein or Donald Trump. It comes, though, as the long fight over the Epstein files has kept child sexual abuse in public view.
In September 2025, Epstein survivors spoke at the U.S. Capitol to demand the files’ release, ABC News reported. “The days of sweeping this under the rug are over. We the survivors say ‘no more,'” survivor Anouska De Georgiou said.
Trump, asked about the event, called the controversy “a Democrat hoax that never ends.”
Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November 2025. On Jan. 30, the Justice Department released more than 3 million more pages and called it the final batch, Gray News reported. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche rejected claims that the department was shielding Trump: “That was never the case and we are always concerned about the victims.”
Epstein died in a federal jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His associate Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence.
Trump’s Epstein Ties and His Denials
Trump has said he knew Epstein from the late 1980s but that they fell out years before Epstein’s 2019 arrest, ABC News reported. Flight records show Trump flew on Epstein’s jet several times in the 1990s.
“I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you,” Trump said in 2019. In 2025, he said the split came after Epstein hired away his staff: “He stole people that worked for me.” The White House has said Trump threw Epstein out of his club for being a creep.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2025 that Trump wrote a bawdy 2003 birthday letter to Epstein. Trump denies writing it and sued the paper, which stands by its reporting.
In December 2025, the Justice Department said of some claims against Trump in released files that “the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already,” Fox News reported.
Trump said in February that he had nothing to hide.
Exploitation Reports Keep Climbing Online
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said its CyberTipline received 21.3 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation in 2025.
Reports of online enticement rose 158% from 2024, and reports of child sex trafficking rose 323%, NCMEC said. It linked both partly to a 2024 law requiring platforms to report them.
NCMEC also received an average of 137 financial sextortion reports a day, up 37% on the year before, one of several crimes against children it tracks online.
Featured image from: Office of the Governor-General, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons