Sh0cking Timing: Why Did Roslyn Only Warn Meghan Markle and Royal Protection About Thomas Markle’s Alleged Abuse in 2018—When He Walked Her Down the Aisle in 2011?

A handwritten letter from Thomas Markle Sr.’s first wife, Roslyn Loveless (also known as Roslyn Markle), sent to the Metropolitan Police’s Fixated Threat Assessment Centre and Royalty and Specialist Protection unit around 2018–January 2019 has become central to the unfolding scandal involving Meghan Markle’s estranged father. The letter, which the Met confirmed it received and shared with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for their awareness, contained “troubling and disturbing” allegations of child sexual abuse and claims that Thomas Sr. posed a security risk. Meghan has publicly stated she was informed of these claims, was given assurances they were being investigated, and used them as the basis for largely cutting contact and barring him from meeting grandchildren Archie and Lilibet.

Yet the timing of Roslyn’s intervention raises pointed questions. She and Thomas Sr. divorced in 1975 after an 11-year marriage that produced Meghan’s half-siblings Samantha Markle and Thomas Markle Jr. Roslyn died in 2024. Decades passed before she wrote to UK authorities specifically flagging concerns for Meghan once she was linked to the royal family. In 2011, when Meghan married film producer Trevor Engelson in Jamaica, Thomas Markle Sr. not only attended but walked his daughter down the aisle alongside her mother Doria Ragland. He has publicly confirmed his presence and role in that intimate beach wedding at the Jamaica Inn in Ocho Rios.

The contrast is stark. Photos from the era show a younger Meghan with her father in domestic settings and with Engelson on their wedding day, both dressed in white. No contemporaneous public warnings from Roslyn appear to have been issued about any risk to Meghan or others in the family at that time. By 2019, after Prince Archie was born, Roslyn gave rare interviews describing Thomas as an “awful father” who should not be allowed near his grandson and warning that “a leopard does not change its spots.” In the police letter itself (reported by outlets including The Telegraph and ITV), she alleged Thomas had spoken of traveling to the Philippines and Thailand “because 12-year-olds are legal there,” claimed he was a high risk to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and to Doria Ragland, and offered to provide further details.

The Met shared the letter with the Sussexes but did not refer its contents to other UK or overseas law enforcement agencies at the time. The force has since referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct over that decision and has begun making referrals abroad. Philippine authorities are separately investigating claims by Thomas Markle Jr. that he found “hundreds, if not thousands” of child sexual abuse images on devices left at his father’s former home in Cebu. Thomas Sr., now 82, has strongly denied the allegations, calling them “sick lies.” He has acknowledged paying for sex with adult women in the Philippines in the past but insists he never engaged with anyone under 18 or possessed such material.