Claims Meghan Markle paid girl at Windsor walkabout to hug her debunked

Meghan Markle has been accused of staging a PR stunt during the walkabout at Windsor Castle on Sept. 10 when she shared a hug with a girl. She allegedly paid the girl's mother to be there, but the said "mother" has come to the duchess' defence.

TikToker and Windsor local, Isabelle Charter, filmed the touching moment between the Duchess of Sussex and 14-year-old Amelka Zak. She was the woman beside the girl in a jean jacket and so it was easy for people to assume that she was the girl's mother.

But Charter said she wanted to go on video to clear up the fake stories that have spread about Meghan Markle's interaction with Zak. She clarified that the hug happened by chance and not planned, contrary to reports that claimed it was staged as a PR stunt.

She said she was outside Windsor Castle with her boyfriend and little brother who both were seen standing behind her. She said she has never met Zak before and they only saw each other for the first time at the walkabout.

"The girl who ended up hugging Meghan, I have never met in my life. I have no relationship with this girl, I am not associated with her," she explained on a Tiktok video adding, "We were purely next to each other by chance in the crowd. We were total strangers."

Charter, 24, shared that she bonded with Zak over their love for the Duchess of Sussex. They were both just so excited to see her because they did not expect her to be there.

She also shut down rumours that claimed she is Zak's mother and was paid by Meghan Markle's PR team to be at the walkabout. She said, "I have seen videos and articles saying that I am this girl's mother, saying that Meghan's PR team paid for me to be there, I was planted in that spot, that I knew Meghan from before from the Invictus Games...the logic is not there."

Charter said that she wanted to show "that the experience and interaction" she and Zak had with Meghan Markle "was really lovely and genuine and she was so kind" to them even thought "it was short, it was really sweet." She then urged the public not to believe all the stories they read online saying, "People try so hard to put her down and to sell fake things, and you need to go off your own personal experiences to really make a judgement on someone." She admitted, "And if I'm honest, this experience just made me love her even more."