Russell Myers: 'Meghan Markle facing hardest chapter of life after dad's child sex abuse images charge'

Like them or loathe them, there are few causes Harry and Meghan have championed longer, or with more conviction, than keeping children safe online. Long before they were rattling the cages of the faceless tech giants from their home in Montecito, the couple were quietly sitting with bereaved parents, listening to stories no mother or father should ever have to tell. So in one sense, it was no surprise to see them in Brussels today, opening the Lost Screen Memorial at the European Parliament and urging lawmakers to turn years of promises into rules that actually are backed by conviction and a desire for results. What nobody could have foreseen when the trip was arranged was the shadow it would be carried out under. Last Friday Meghan's father, Thomas Markle Sr, was arrested by FBI agents in Florida and charged with one count of possessing child sex abuse images. Prosecutors allege the material, which includes photographs said to show him with young girls, was found in storage units in Los Angeles he had rented for almost twenty years. The 82-year-old man has denied wrongdoing but faces 20 years if convicted. Meghan, who has not spoken to her father since the eve of her wedding in 2018, has said only that she is deeply distressed. It is hard to imagine what she is going through. Whatever the estrangement, this is still her dad, and the allegations he faces go to the very heart of the issue she flew to Brussels to talk about. It is little wonder, then, that she pulled out of the keynote speech at the last minute. Who could blame her for simply not feeling strong enough to stand at a lectern and speak. Any word uttered, any stutter or crack in her voice would have been poured over and let's face it, detracted from the event. That she turned up at all said a great deal. It would have been far easier, and entirely understandable, for her to stay at home and let Harry go alone. Instead she was there, and the most striking image of the day was not of the Duchess in front of the cameras but of her comforting Sandra Spitaels, the Belgian mother whose teenage son Glenn died in 2017 after an image of him was shared online. It fell to Harry to carry the words, and he did so with obvious emotion. Children, he said, "deserve to feel safe wherever they are." It is a simple line and it was clearly meant as a message about phones, apps and bedrooms where parents assume their children are safe and too often they are not. But in the week the Sussexes have had, it landed with added weight and meaning. Safety for children is not only about screens. It is about the adults around them, the people they should be able to trust, and that is a truth this family is now confronting in the most painful way imaginable. However, with the scandal and infighting that has followed their exit from the royal family like a bad penny, does their presence help or hinder? Far from me to sit on the fence, but in truth, I believe it is both. Nobody can pretend the Sussexes do not bring the cameras. From Brussels to Birmingham, they show up, everyone goes a bit gaga. Most events about online harm come and go with barely a paragraph of coverage. Today the world was watching the European Parliament, and parents like Sandra Spitaels had a far bigger audience for their stories than they would otherwise have had. For campaigners who have spent years being politely ignored by the platforms, that matters. But attention is double edged. The danger is that the headlines from today are not about the Lost Screen Memorial or what MEPs intend to do, or not do, but will be about Thomas Markle, Meghan's empty slot on the running order and the inevitable chorus online asking whether she should have been there at all. When the messengers become the story, the message can get lost, and the families who came to be heard risk becoming a backdrop. It is worth remembering, too, that the Sussexes are not the only royals on this beat. The Duchess of Edinburgh has been working on the same issue for years with far less fanfare, and addressed MEPs in Brussels on it herself not long ago. There is room for both approaches, but quiet persistence often moves the dial further than one big day. In the end, the measure of today will not be the photographs. It will be whether the lawmakers who listened to Harry go away and do something, and whether the platforms he called out feel any more pressure tomorrow than they did yesterday. If the Sussexes can keep the focus on the parents and off themselves, in what is shaping up to be the hardest chapter of Meghan's life, they will have done the cause a real service.