Meghan Markle's father, arrested for child pornography

BarcelonaThomas Markle, Meghan Markle's father, has been arrested in Florida for alleged possession of child pornography, as reported by the CBS News network. Last month it emerged that Markle, 82, was being investigated by Philippine authorities for allegedly possessing graphic child abuse material after his son, Thomas Markle Jr., reported him for files he found on a computer. The Duchess of Sussex has not had a relationship with her father, a figure who has always been controversial, for years.

"A Florida man was arrested today following a federal criminal complaint accusing him of keeping child sexual abuse material—including sexually explicit photographs of himself with prepubescent girls—in two storage units in the Los Angeles area that he rented for nearly two decades. Thomas Wayne Markle, 82, a resident of Lakeland, Florida, is charged with one count of possession of child pornography," the United States Department of Justice has confirmed.

The Duchess of Sussex had known for some time that her father was consuming child pornography. Specifically, as she made public this October through a letter, she had been aware of the situation since 2019, when the police alerted her. The information reached her just after her wedding and before she left the British royal house in 2020 and moved with Prince Harry to the United States. The Duchess has stated that she endured media criticism regarding her cold father-daughter relationship so as not to hinder the investigations into these "disturbing and unsettling accusations," as requested by the London Metropolitan Police. "I hope it is now understood that the distance from my father and my decision not to allow him any contact with our children had a reason: to protect them."

This week, the Philippine police confirmed the existence of child abuse material on various devices found at Thomas Markle's home in Cebu. The Duchess of Sussex's father lived in the Philippines until mid-2026, when he moved to the town of Lakeland, about 330 kilometers from Miami. Recently, he had been admitted to a clinic for dementia patients. The investigations began on October 23rd. In total, nearly 7,500 photographs and one video have been seized, all of minors, boys and girls, of Asian, Latin, and European descent, aged between 10 and 11 years old. According to the Philippine police, the recordings were not made in the archipelago. Among the items analyzed are at least nine mobile phones, three SD cards, five hard drives, and one camera.

For his part, Thomas Markle Jr. assured the newspaper The Sun that he found "thousands" of child abuse images in four boxes that his father had allegedly abandoned at the house in Cebu, where he lived until May of this year. According to his testimony, in some of the images he recognized the house where his father lived for several years in Rosarito, a town in the Mexican state of Baja California. The authorities, however, have not yet confirmed this assumption.