Thomas Markle Sr, the father of Meghan, wife of Britain’s Prince Harry, has admitted to paying for sex in the Philippines but denied allegations he possessed child sexual abuse images.
According to The Sun, Meghan’s half-brother, Thomas Markle Jr, alleged that he found a collection of images belonging to their father at his former home in the Philippines.
He reportedly told police in the country that he discovered the child abuse pictures and videos mixed up with innocent family mementos.
The newspaper said he also contacted FBI investigators in the U.S. in July.
Authorities in the Philippines said that they were investigating the allegations.
In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Markle said he has “never had sex with anyone under the age of 18”.
He told the paper that when he was single, he travelled to the Philippines at least twice and slept with sex workers.
“I like Asian women but that is not a crime,” he said.
“I am not well enough to go to the Philippines but I will speak to anyone who wants to talk to me. I have nothing to hide”.
Markle is learning to walk again at a nursing facility in Florida after he had his leg amputated during life-saving surgery in 2025.
He said he would also welcome any forensic examination of his computer, telling the Mail on Sunday: “If there is anything bad in there, it was put there by someone else”.
Markel’s eldest daughter Samantha Markle, defended her father, telling the paper: “I believe this is a set-up”.
It comes after London’s Metropolitan Police on Saturday confirmed it passed a letter featuring claims of alleged offending outside the UK by Thomas Markle Sr to Meghan and Harry but did not share details with other law enforcement agencies.
The force said it received a letter in 2019 about a “number of claims” relating to Markle, adding it was “reviewing the handling of this matter” including whether the force needs to be referred to the police watchdog.
Earlier on Friday, Meghan said she was made aware of the disturbing allegations about her father in 2018.
She said she was shown a letter sent to Scotland Yard eight years ago making troubling allegations against Markle and she was assured that these were being investigated.
A spokesperson for the Duchess of Sussex said if police had a time-stamped record confirming the letter was reviewed in 2019, then that “should be treated as the accurate reference point for when it was received and shared with the Duchess”.
They said on Saturday afternoon that it was “understandable” because of the passage of time that Meghan “may have been mistaken by a few months”.
The Telegraph reported the duchess is “upset and frustrated” over the Met’s failure to act.
According to The Sun, Meghan sent a letter to her father last year which reportedly said she knew of the accusations against him and that she would never allow him to meet his grandchildren.
Meghan became estranged from her former TV lighting director father in the run-up to her 2018 royal wedding after he was caught staging paparazzi photographs.
Markle did not attend the wedding, leaving Harry’s father King Charles III to accompany Meghan down the aisle and meaning the only member of her family present was her mother, Doria Ragland.
Meghan was the only child of Markle’s marriage to Ragland, though he has two children, Samantha and Thomas Jr, from an earlier marriage.
In 2021, Meghan won a High Court privacy and copyright claim against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) over articles that reproduced parts of a personal and private handwritten letter she wrote to Markle in a bid to get him to stop talking to the press.
She wrote the emotional five-page letter to him in August 2018 after taking advice from two unnamed senior royals.
In 2025, Markle moved to the Philippines for a new life after suffering a series of strokes.
