London — Britain's Metropolitan Police said Thursday it had voluntarily referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct over how it handled a 2019 letter containing allegations about Thomas Markle, the father of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex^1,2.

The force said the referral covered two decisions: not informing other law-enforcement agencies, and passing the letter to the office of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex¹.

BBC reported that the handwritten letter was sent to the Met's royal protection team by Roslyn Loveless, Markle's first wife, who divorced him in 1975 and died in 2024, and that officers forwarded it to Meghan in January 2019¹.

The Met said the letter did not contain specific security information but included claims of alleged offending outside the United Kingdom, and that an initial review in recent days led to the IOPC referral¹.

The force also said it intended to make further referrals to relevant overseas law-enforcement agencies, a step it expected to finish in the coming days^1,2.

Markle has strongly denied recent allegations that he possessed images of child abuse¹. Sky News reported that Meghan has said she is deeply distressed by those allegations².

Meghan said last week the 2019 letter had made troubling allegations against her father and had given her reason not to visit him or allow him to meet her children, and that she had believed the claims were being investigated¹.

There are also reports that the Met did not keep a copy of the letter and later sought one from the Sussexes; the force said it was aware of media reports that it had tried to obtain a copy¹.

Jim Gamble, a former head of the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, told BBC Radio 4 he would have expected a UK force receiving information about an alleged threat to children in another country to share it, including with the FBI, even as an unproven allegation¹.

The IOPC will consider why the contents were not shared with other agencies in Britain or overseas¹. What the letter said in detail, and how overseas agencies will respond, has not been established on the public record¹.