Meghan Markle ignores reporters' questions at child safety event after dad's arrest

Despite Meghan Markle’s claims that she was “not strong enough, emotionally” to deliver a keynote speech on child safety at a European Parliament event Tuesday, following her father’s arrest on child pornography charges, she looked relaxed and even cracked a small smile while being photographed entering the parliamentary building alongside her husband, Prince Harry.

The Duchess of Sussex, wearing a stylish black coat and shiny silver earrings, walked a red carpet with Harry into building in Brussels, Belgium for the very serious event, an exhibition honoring children who died as the result of online harm. Meghan tried to look serious by talking to accompanying diplomats, while she ignored questions shouted at her by reporters. “How are you coping?” one reporter asked.

A number of people on social media didn’t think that the former Hollywood TV actor had any problem walking this red carpet or being photographed, despite the devastating spectacle of her father’s Nov. 6 arrest.

“The woman is still there for the cameras. She has serious questions to answer about her silence,” one person said on a Sunday Times X post, linking to a sympathetic article about her not feeling “strong enough” to speak at the event.

But no reporter along the red carpet asked any of these serious questions, which have dominated social media commentary about Meghan for the past three weeks. The questions arose over how Meghan responded to news that her once-beloved father, Thomas Markle, kept troves of alleged child sex abuse images in storage boxes and lockers near his homes in Los Angeles, Philippines and Mexico.

The questions boil down to: If Meghan and her husband are so committed to child safety, why did she not say anything for seven or eight years about the “troubling and disturbing” child sex abuse allegations made against her 82-year-old father, which she herself said she learned about in 2019? And, over those years, why did she not follow up with the Metropolitan Police, the FBI or any other law enforcement agency to check on the status of a supposed investigation, which she said she was told was underway in 2019?

Those questions did not come up among the reporters covering her and Harry’s appearance at the Lost Screen Memorial exhibition. Instead, headlines focused on Meghan “making her first public appearance” since her father’s arrest Friday in Florida, and her disclosure to The Telegraph that she had pulled out of delivering an address herself; she would leave it to her husband to speak Tuesday.

Regarding Harry’s speech, People magazine posted a story with the headline: “Prince Harry Says Children ‘Deserve to Feel Safe.'” The story quoted the son of King Charles as saying, “I’m not here as an expert or a politician. I’m here as a father. My wife, as a mother.”

Harry is fifth in line to the throne of the United Kingdom, which has not been part of the European Union since Brexit but he used his speech to nonetheless push for EU legislation that is said to promote child online safety, as royal journalist Tom Sykes reported. Harry said, “All children should be able to go online and discover something wonderful. A friend. An interest that becomes a passion. A place where they feel understood.”

“They deserve to feel safe wherever they are,” he continued. “In a classroom. On a playground. At any time, no matter where they are.”

Harry’s declaration of support for online child safety received mixed reactions in the comments section of the People article, with some people applauding him and Meghan for promoting this issue. But others called them hypocrites for making themselves such high-profile advocates, when it’s questionable whether Meghan ever acted on the alleged harm perpetrated by her father.

Meghan has justified not saying anything publicly about her father by saying she was advised that doing so would jeopardize an open, ongoing investigation — which, it turns out, was not taking place.

But royal journalists and people online have pushed back to say she still could have used her position as the wife of Prince Harry to make private inquiries, to push for an investigation or to quietly offer to help. They also question whether she didn’t say anything all these years because she was worried that it would hurt her brand to have an alleged pedophile as a father.

These critics moreover take issue with the fact that Meghan and Harry spent several years after 2019, speaking sympathetically about her father, while claiming that the British media and a cruelly indifferent royal family caused her to become estranged from him and to suffer mental anguish when she was a working member of the royal family.

Among the People magazine comments, one person said they agreed that “all children should feel safe everywhere, including online.” But this person also said, “Every measure should be taken by every individual to ensure their safety! Harry and Meghan BOTH chose to stay silent and let an alleged family child abuser remain free. … She has stated she kept her children away from her father to keep them safe. What about all the other children?”

On X posts for the Sunday Times or ITV News, people were even more lacerating in their criticism of Meghan and Harry. They chided her for not addressing the allegations against her father until recently, and blasted her and Harry for appearing at this memorial event and using it to garner headlines as advocates of child safety.

“Hypocrisy at its finest. Pair of attention seeking con artists,” one person said on the Times X post. Another person referred to Meghan recently saying that she wrote her father a letter in December 2025, while he was in the hospital in the Philippines after suffering a stroke and having his leg amputated. In this letter, Meghan said she severed contact with her father once and for all and told him he would never meet his grandchildren, Archie and Lilibet, because she knew he had abused young girls, as the BBC reported.

.”She can drop the ‘pity me,'” this person said. “She failed to report her ongoing concerns to the US authorities despite having written to her father in 2025 stating she knew he had abused children! She’s done.”

Many others on both the Times and ITV posts also questioned how truly distressed Meghan is about her father’s arrest last Friday, given how she “scraped up enough strength to walk that red carpet. She wasn’t going to miss those cameras.”

Several others also said she apparently felt “strong enough to attend the event for “camera optics” or “photos ops” and “camera clicks.”

Meghan’s father was arrested at the Tampa, Florida-area senior care facility where he’s been living since moving back from the Philippines in May 2026. Images went global of the elderly amputee being taking into custody by FBI agents, who handcuffed and pushed him in a wheelchair.

Following his arrest, Markle briefly appeared in federal court and was subsequently released on his own recognizance, allowing him to return to his senior living facility, where he reportedly receives care after being diagnosed with dementia. His arraignment will take place in California on an unspecified date, People reported.

Thomas Markle acknowledged to the Mail on Sunday that he paid for sex with adult women while visiting the Philippines, but he denied ever having sex with anyone under the age of 18 or possessing child sexual abuse material.

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