The Duchess of Sussex has pulled out of delivering a speech about online child safety following her father’s arrest because she’s ‘not emotionally strong enough’.
Meghan, 45, and Prince Harry, 42, were due to deliver the address at the opening of the Lost Screen Memorial at the European Parliament in Brussels tomorrow.
The duchess was set to introduce her husband and speak about the need to support all vulnerable children.
However, Meghan has decided to cancel her speech after her father, Thomas Markle Snr, 82, was arrested by the FBI last week and charged with the possession of child abuse images.
‘She’s just not strong enough, emotionally, to be doing any public speaking right now,’ a source told The Telegraph.
Prince Harry is still set to deliver his speech in Belgium and is said to be hoping his words will be understood in the context of the arrest of his father-in-law, whom he has never met.
Meghan will still be in attendance in what will be her first public appearance since allegations came to light last month.
After Harry has delivered his speech, the Sussexes are to walk through the memorial, which honours children who have died after being subjected to harm online.
The art installation shows 50 phones each with a picture of a child who died after being exposed to harmful social media.
Meghan and Prince Harry were due to deliver the address at the opening of the Lost Screen Memorial at the European Parliament in Brussels tomorrow
The Duchess of Sussex’s estranged father Thomas Markle, 82, was arrested by the FBI in Florida on Friday for allegedly possessing child porn
The duke will later join a panel discussion called Beyond Promises: Building A Digital Future That Works For Children to discuss how to protect children online.
In May, Meghan embraced grieving parents who lost their children to online harm as she visited the Lost Screen Memorial in Switzerland.
‘Children must be safe by design, not safe by chance,’ she said during the ceremony.
The Daily Mail has contacted the Sussexes’ representatives for comment.
Meghan’s father will be subject to home detention and electronic tagging following his release on bail after appearing in a US court accused of possessing child sex abuse material, including images of himself with indecent young girls.
Travel restrictions were also imposed by the judge on Markle, who did not enter a plea at the hearing in Tampa, Florida.
A future court appearance in California is not due for at least several weeks, according to the US justice department.
Markle was arrested by FBI agents on Friday after they seized a haul of material from two Los Angeles storage units he rented for nearly two decades.
He is charged with one count of possession of child sex abuse images.
Friday’s arrest came just days after the Daily Mail alerted the feds to a cache of child porn found inside a storage unit Markle had rented near his former home in Rosarito, Mexico.
Markle previously told the Daily Mail: ‘I had no storage units in Rosarito!’ and has denied wrongdoing in relation to the alleged Philippines discovery.
He came under investigation after he was reported to police in the Philippines and the FBI last month by his son, Thomas Markle Jnr, who allegedly found illegal images in his father’s belongings in Cebu City.
Acting on warrants, the FBI searched the units registered to Markle, which he had rented since 2008, with his most recent payments on both made last month by auto-pay.
Inside, agents seized about 78 items, including slides, film negatives and books that contained suspected child sex abuse material.
Two of the images allegedly depict an adult man – whom a witness ‘positively identified’ as Markle – with a nude young girl.
In one of them, according to court documents, the man ‘appears to be in the age range of 30s to 40s’, which suggests the alleged abuse dates back decades, given Markle is now 82.
The Duchess of Sussex said she was ‘deeply distressed’ by the allegations engulfing her father in the Philippines. She has not commented on the developments in Mexico since they surfaced last week
It was the Mail’s discovery of Markle’s storage unit in Mexico last week (pictured, above) and our immediate alerting of the FBI that has contributed to this long overdue outcome.
A third image is said to show a nude young girl in a room that appears to be part of a motel chain in the Philippines.
Other photographs allegedly show Markle with children in various stages of undress.
If convicted, Markle would face at least 20 years in federal prison.
First assistant US attorney Bill Essayli said: ‘Markle is accused of possessing child sexual abuse material, including photographs depicting himself with minor girls.
‘These allegations are extremely serious, and we will prosecute Markle to the fullest extent of federal law.’
FBI director Kash Patel said: ‘Markle allegedly targeted innocent children and sought to steal their innocence through his criminal actions.
‘Working with our Justice Department partners, our agents moved quickly, identified and located the explicit material, and arrested Markle in Florida.
‘This FBI will use every single resource at our disposal to protect innocent kids – any predator who targets children will have zero safe haven in this country or anywhere they try to hide.’
Markle, who was living in a dementia care home in the US, has admitted paying for sex in the Philippines but has denied ever possessing child abuse imagery.
Meghan, who moved back to the UK with Harry in August, said she was ‘deeply distressed’ at the allegations about her father, from whom she has been estranged since the run-up to her 2018 wedding.
She revealed she was sent a letter via the Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection in 2019 which made ‘troubling and disturbing allegations’ about her father, but she was given assurances these were being investigated.
The Met has admitted it never shared the details with other law enforcement agencies, with the police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, now investigating the force’s conduct.
The duchess had wanted to ‘speak out’ immediately after reading the letter but police advised her against this, sources said.
When former TV lighting director Markle had his leg amputated in the Philippines last year, he made pleas for the duchess to contact him.
Meghan is said to have written him a final letter in which she said she knew he was an abuser and that he would never see his grandchildren, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
