The Duchess of Sussex has broken her silence after it was revealed her father, Thomas Markle Senior, is being investigated over alleged child abuse material.
Meghan said she is “deeply distressed” and that the “troubling and disturbing allegations” are the reason she has not allowed her father to have contact with her and Prince Harry’s two children.
A statement, shared with news.com.au via a spokesperson, said Meghan first learned of the allegations after a letter sent to London’s Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection was forwarded to her.
She said it “made troubling and disturbing allegations again
She went on to assert that she has distanced her children, Archie, seven, and Lilibet, five, from her father over the allegations.
“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.”
She said her thoughts are with any children who may have been harmed and expressed hope that justice will be served.
“The breadth of what has now been uncovered is more sickening than one could ever imagine,” she said. “My sincerest hope is that justice will be fully served and that the priority remains the safety and protection of innocent children.”
Thomas Markle Senior denied the accusation of possessing child sex images in an interview with the Daily Mail, calling it “sick lies”.
The Sun reports that Meghan’s 82-year-old father, from whom she has been estranged for eight years, had allegedly kept the stash of images at his home in the Philippines.
It’s reported that his son, Thomas Markle Jr – Meghan’s half-brother – discovered the collection of “hundreds, if not thousands” of images and reported his father to police.
Meghan’s half-sister has defended her father, alleging that Mr Markle Sr was being framed by her brother.
“There is no merit in these disgusting allegations whatsoever and my brother is disgusting for making them up. He wants to destroy our dad. Shame on him,” Samantha told the Daily Mail.
“My brother first came out with these lies a few weeks ago when the cash from my dad was cut off. He has used dad as a cash cow for years and once the money stopped he made up the most outrageous lies he could to try and make money from the media,” she continued.
The Sun reported that four large boxes of the child abuse material were allegedly found by Thomas Jr at his father’s home, which led to his tipoff to local detectives in the city of Cebu.
Thomas Senior has had a series of health issues this year, including a stroke in May and a blood clot which resulted in the amputation of his left leg.
He was then forced to move back to the US in order to pursue “ongoing medical care”.
Meghan and her father – with whom she lived between the ages of 11 and 18 – have been estranged since her 2018 royal wedding, after she was left “furious” when he was caught staging paparazzi photos in an apparent bid to generate a positive public image.
He then pulled out of attending the nuptials and walking her down the aisle, claiming he had had a heart attack and was in hospital.
It later emerged that Thomas Senior had become embroiled in a heated phone call with his daughter and Harry over the issue.
“I felt disrespected by them. I was recovering from a heart attack, lying in a bed, having a phone call, and the things were being said that hurt me,” he later told The Sun.
Last December, it emerged that Meghan had sent a handwritten letter to her estranged father as he recovered from lifesaving surgery in the Phillippines, ending a years-long wall of silence.
A spokesman for the Duchess of Sussex confirmed to news.com.au at the time that she had “reached out” to Thomas after hearing that he had been hospitalised.
