Duchess Meghan confronted dad over child sexual abuse allegations with 2025 letter delivered to hospital bed

London — Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, confronted her estranged father last year about child sexual abuse allegations leveled against him, about six years after she was first made aware of the claims, according to new information from CBS News’ British partner BBC News.

Last week, police in the Philippines confirmed they were investigating Thomas Markle Sr. over his alleged possession of a large stash of child sexual abuse photos and videos, which were handed in to authorities by his son, Thomas Markle Jr.

Meghan, who is married to Britain’s Prince Harry, said in a statement last week that she was “deeply distressed” by word of the investigation into her father, and that she had first learned of allegations against him in 2018, when London’s Metropolitan Police shared a letter with her laying out related claims. She said it was based on that information that she and Harry decided to cut her father off from contact with their children.

Video that the British tabloid the Daily Mail says it obtained exclusively shows Markle accepting a letter sent by his daughter in his hospital room in the U.S. in December 2025. According to the BBC, in that letter the duchess wrote that she and authorities “knew he had abused young girls,” adding that he would never meet Meghan and Harry’s children Archie and Lilibet.

Thomas Markle Sr., 82, was quoted by the Mail in a Sunday article as saying he didn’t remember what was written in the letter from his daughter, but “if Meghan says that’s what she wrote, then she’s probably right.”

The Mail quoted her father on Friday as saying he had “never downloaded anything like that in my life,” and dismissing the allegations against him as “sick lies.” On Sunday, the tabloid ran a new article quoting him as saying he had paid for sex in the Philippines, but reiterating his denial of possessing child sexual abuse materials and insisting he never had sex with anyone under the age of 18.

He vowed to cooperate with authorities, according to the Daily Mail.

Another British tabloid, The Sun, reported over the weekend that the Metropolitan Police were made aware in 2019 of a number of claims against Markle, including alleged sexual abuse of a child, and that they had passed them on to the Duchess of Sussex’s office at that time.

In a statement last week, the duchess said it was because of these allegations that she had  kept her family distanced from her father.

“In 2018, a letter was sent to the Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection. That letter was subsequently shared with me. It made troubling and disturbing allegations against my father and I was given assurances that these were being investigated,” Meghan said in her Friday statement. 

“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.

“We are aware of media reports that officers from the Met’s Royalty and Specialist Protection Command were involved in the passing on of a letter in 2018,” a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said last week. “We are undertaking enquiries internally in an effort to confirm this.”

It is understood that the London police are not currently investigating Thomas Markle.

It is unclear what allegations were in the letter about her father that Meghan says police shared with her in 2018, or what allegations she was referring to when she wrote to him last year.

CBS News contributor Roya Nikkhah, royal editor for the Sunday Times newspaper, told CBS News on Monday that the revelations of the last week were very likely to garner new public sympathy for the duchess.

“I don’t think the wider public can not have sympathy for Meghan going through this,” she said. “It’s an ordeal, an extraordinary thing to learn about your own father.”

“I think a lot of the feeling by the British public around what has happened the last few years has been more about the way Harry and Meghan left the royal family and what we have heard from them since, which is completely separate to this — their grievances against the royal family, their feelings of not feeling comfortable here,” said Nikkhah. “But they are now back, and they are back, we understand, for a considerable period of time. I’m sure the British public and wider public will have sympathy for what’s happened regarding her father. I don’t know whether this will change people’s views about what’s been said and done the last six or seven years since they’ve left.”