The FBI is participating in a Philippine investigation into allegations that Thomas Markle Sr., the estranged father of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, possessed child pornography at his former home in the Philippines, according to the country’s top police official.
“The investigation is going in the right direction,” Wilson Casueta, Acting Director of the Philippine National Police, told reporters Tuesday, according to a report by Page Six. “If there is sufficient evidence, [then] we will file a case.”
Casueta confirmed the FBI is conducting its own parallel investigation into the 82-year-old. He said Philippine authorities have been in contact only with U.S. investigators on the matter.
“Only the FBI and the U.S. authorities have reached out to our Women’s and Children’s Protection Center,” Casueta said.
He added that UK police have not reached out to Philippine authorities regarding the allegations against Prince Harry’s father-in-law.
Philippine authorities say the alleged material included a video depicting minors engaged in sex acts. Casueta said the video reportedly showed male and female children of Asian and Caucasian descent, but stressed that no Filipino children were involved in the materials under review.
How the Allegations Surfaced
The allegations trace back to Meghan Markle’s half-brother, Thomas Markle Jr., who told police he discovered “hundreds, if not thousands” of child sex abuse images at his father’s former Philippines home, as previously reported.
Separately, a Daily Mail reporter has said materials described as “books about pedophilia and magazines showing children being sexually abused” were found in an abandoned storage unit Thomas Markle Sr. had rented near his former home in Mexico. The Daily Mail said it reported the matter to the FBI.
Meghan Markle’s Response
Meghan Markle has said she learned of allegations against her father in 2018 and has pointed to that knowledge as the reason she cut off his contact with her children.
“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.
However, Meghan Markle and her father were already estranged before she had children and before she says she learned of the allegations against him. He did not attend her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry, a fact that was widely reported at the time. Multiple reports indicate she was not aware of the alleged child pornography possession until after the wedding.
Since the allegations became public, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have reportedly left the UK with their two children, 7-year-old Prince Archie and 5-year-old Princess Lilibet, for an undisclosed location.
Thomas Markle Sr. was recently moved into a care home for dementia patients in Florida, according to a report by the Sun.
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