Harry and Meghan Leave UK as Philippines Probes Thomas Markle

Prince Harry and Meghan have taken their two children out of Britain for a short break overseas while Meghan's estranged father is under investigation over allegations he possessed child sexual abuse material, HELLO! magazine's royal editor Emily Nash reported Monday.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are spending time with close friends, and Meghan's circle has been calling her every day to check in, according to the report. A friend told the magazine she is struggling badly.

"She's just really, really upset," the friend said. "She keeps on looking at Lili and she's in tears, and thinking about all the children, the alleged victims. She has young children herself. It's just devastating."

Thomas Markle Sr., 82, is under investigation by the Philippine Department of Justice after his son, Thomas Markle Jr., 60, reported him to police in the Philippines, saying he found child sex abuse images at his father's home. The elder Markle, who now lives at a nursing home in Florida, has denied the allegations. He has not been charged.

A short break, not a permanent exit

The destination has not been made public. Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, are on a half-term break from their new school in the Cotswolds, after the couple moved the children from California to the UK in August.

Meghan had already pulled back from the news before any of this broke. "She decided a while ago, before this happened, that she was going to take herself away from the media and not look at anything, for her own mental health," the friend said.

That did not hold. "But obviously, she's been getting sent a lot of messages from friends in the UK and people all over saying how sorry they are, but it's just been an emotional rollercoaster for her. She's in bits," the friend said, adding that there is some relief that it is finally out there.

What Meghan said publicly

Meghan, 45, issued a statement on Friday, October 23. "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," she said.

She said she first learned of serious claims about her father years ago. "In 2018, a letter was sent to the Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection. That letter was subsequently shared with me," she said. "It made troubling and disturbing allegations against my father and I was given assurances that these were being investigated."

She then addressed, for the first time, the real reason her father has never met Archie or Lilibet. "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."

Her closing line: "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." Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

The son who walked into the police station

Thomas Markle Jr. told The Sun he found a cache of child sex abuse material in boxes at his father's house in Cebu province, where the older man lived from 2025 until earlier in 2026. He had been his father's caregiver there following a stroke in 2022.

"I had no option but to report my dad," he told the paper on Thursday, October 22. He said he had supported and cared for his father for years, that this now stops, and that he will not speak to him again unless he is called to give evidence against him. He has said he reported the discovery to the FBI as well as to Philippine authorities.

The Sun published photographs of the boxes being carried into the police station and reported that the material handed over includes a 35mm negative showing Thomas Markle on a bed with an Asian girl, which the paper says shows him sexually abusing her, plus a second image of the same man, then in his late forties or early fifties, partly obscured by the girl's arm.

Tom Sykes, who writes The Royalist column for The Daily Beast, called Thomas Markle Jr. a deeply compromised witness, citing his arrests, including one for allegedly pulling a gun on his girlfriend, his drinking and his YouTube videos attacking Meghan. Sykes wrote that he still believes the reporters who say they saw the pictures.

Thomas Markle Sr. calls it lies

Markle Sr. denied the allegations to the Daily Mail on Friday, October 23. "I'm shocked, I'm hurt and I'm very upset that my son is making these accusations against me. I could never do what I'm being accused of. It's the worst thing anyone could accuse me of," he said. He called the claims sick lies.

He also told the paper the computers had not been in his possession since he left Rosarito, Mexico, in January 2025.

In a longer interview with The Mail on Sunday from the Florida nursing facility where he is learning to walk again, Markle denied having sex with underage girls but admitted using prostitutes, saying that when he was single he traveled to the Philippines at least twice. "I have never had sex with anyone under the age of 18," he said. He claims any images found on his devices were planted, has suggested his son may be behind it, and says he will speak to investigators and take a lie detector test.

The letter the Met never shared

The author of the letter at the center of the story was Markle's first wife, the late Roslyn Loveless, who was married to him from 1964 to 1975 and is the mother of Samantha Markle and Thomas Markle Jr. She wrote to London's Metropolitan Police accusing her former husband of being a pedophile.

The Met confirmed on Saturday that it received the letter. "Following a thorough review of Met Police systems and records," the force said, "we have confirmed that in January 2019, we received a letter containing a number of claims about alleged offending outside the United Kingdom." It went to the Met's Protection Command "to raise concerns in relation to the security of the Duchess of Sussex," was reviewed, and was passed to the Sussexes' office "for their awareness." The force added: "The details of the allegations in the letter were not shared with other law enforcement agencies."

Meghan dated the letter to 2018. Her spokesperson said that without a diary entry or contemporaneous record, "it is understandable that she may have been mistaken by a few months." The Met says it is now reviewing the handling of the matter, including whether to refer itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

A friend told The Telegraph that Meghan is "upset and really frustrated that, having effectively been told to stay quiet and having been given assurances it would be investigated, it appears nothing was done," and is "obviously pleased" the force is weighing a referral to the watchdog.

The final letter to her father

Meghan cut contact with her father after she read the allegations, and she was advised at the time not to go public with them. She had met Roslyn Loveless only once or twice.

After her father kept complaining about the estrangement in television and newspaper interviews, she wrote to him a final time in December 2025, following the amputation of his leg. The Telegraph reports the letter accused him of being unsafe around children, told him he would never be permitted to meet her own children, and urged him to seek professional help.

Markle Sr. says nobody told him about the letter sent to the Met. "[Meghan] never said a word to me about this letter accusing me of such terrible things," he told The Mail on Sunday. "If Meghan or anyone else had come to me in 2018 and told me about the letter, I would have had a chance to defend myself." He vowed to do whatever it takes to clear his name.

Two governments are now involved

The Philippine News Agency, run by that country's government, said in a Facebook post on Friday that the Department of Justice is investigating reports involving an octogenarian American national who left child abuse videos and photos at his home in Cebu province. DOJ Undersecretary Nicholas Ty told the agency that the department's anti-trafficking and OSAEC task force "is currently investigating the matter." OSAEC stands for online sexual abuse and exploitation of children.

The same agency reported that Markle Sr. has since traveled from the Philippines to the United States for medical treatment.

An FBI official told ABC News on Friday: "The FBI is 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."

The version of the story the couple told for years

For eight years, the public explanation for the rift was the staged paparazzi pictures. Markle Sr. did not attend the 2018 wedding at St. George's Chapel in Windsor after he was found to have been paid to pose for photos. then-Prince Charles walked Meghan down the aisle instead.

In the 2022 Netflix series Harry & Meghan, the duke said of those photos: "It's amazing what people will do when offered a huge amount of money… $50,000, $100,000, to hand over photographs, to create a story… Of course it's incredibly sad what happened. She had a father before this and now she doesn't have a father. And I shouldered that because if Meg wasn't with me, then her dad would still be her dad."

In the 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview, Meghan said of the same episode: "I've lost my father." Harry returned to the subject at length in his memoir, Spare. Sykes argues the couple blamed the press for a breakup that had a very different cause, a problem for them now, though he notes the police had told Meghan not to discuss the allegations and that the claims were defamatory.