The Duchess of Sussex’s senior royal official, Samantha Cohen, has finally revealed the explosive bullying claims that first rocked Kensington Palace in 2021 and still resonate today.
Mrs Cohen, a loyal and former palace aide, confirmed to an Australian newspaper that she was indeed among those interviewed by the Palace following complaints about the duchess’s alleged aggressive behaviour.
You might think that’s a small step forward, but a significant one when it comes to an episode that officials have so far swept under the rug.
After all, Samantha Cohen is no ordinary courtesan.
An intelligent and charming Australian, she had been working with the late Queen for 20 years when she was asked to take on a challenging new task.
In 2017, Cohen agreed to help the newly engaged Meghan acclimatise to the Royal Family and life at Kensington Palace.
Samantha Cohen sits behind the late Queen and Duchess of Sussex on a visit to Widnes, Cheshire, in June 2018.
Their task was to persuade an ambitious, outspoken, career-minded Californian actress to embrace the immutable hierarchy and rigid protocols of the Royal Family.
Maybe it was a difficult task. I certainly think Mrs. Cohen quickly became exasperated, after about six months, and that Meghan either didn’t agree with the non-negotiables of royalty or she didn’t understand them.
I also think members of Samantha Cohen’s team saw this as irresponsible self-indulgence.
Both sides would blame a clash of cultures.
Could a profiled 36-year-old adopt the British propensity for understatement? Could he abandon Hollywood hyperbole in favor of the Palace’s understated, repetitive “no comment”?
It seems not.
A year later, after Harry and Meghan’s glorious May wedding in Windsor, Cohen was in the mood to resign.
Samantha Cohen attends Harry and Meghan’s wedding in Windsor on May 19, 2018
The Queen honors Samantha Cohen by naming her a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace in November 2016.
According to Valentine Low’s book Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind The Crown, Mrs Cohen complained, behind the scenes, that she felt she had been “treated harshly” and compared the job to “working with teenagers”.
She doesn’t go that far in her conversation with the Herald Sun, but Cohen says she stayed in her job three times longer than she had planned, as officials struggled to find a replacement for her.
And, interestingly, when a new private secretary was finally found, that person resigned during Harry and Meghan’s tour of Africa in 2019.
The Sun Herald quotes Mrs Cohen as saying: “I was only supposed to stay six months but I stayed for 18; we couldn’t find a replacement for me and when we did, we took them on tour to Africa with Harry and Meghan to show them.” how it works, but they also left while they were in Africa.
Cohen also appeared to confirm that she was one of the courtiers who had been interviewed following a bullying complaint filed by Harry and Meghan’s communications secretary, Jason Knauf, in 2018, and first revealed by The Times in 2020.
Jason Knauf, right, filed a harassment complaint when he was Harry and Meghan’s communications secretary in 2018. Pictured with Harry, William and Kate.
It became clear that three women had formally told Knauf that Meghan was “allegedly” bullying them.
And that, as the complaints accumulated, Mr. Knauf began to put together a file.
According to leaked email correspondence, Knauff alleged to the Palace’s human resources department that Meghan bullied two personal assistants “outside the house” in the space of a year and was targeting other female staffers.
Knauf noted that an outgoing staff member had said her encounters with Meghan made her “feel sick.”
“I can’t stop shaking,” was another quoted comment, and “I feel terrified.”
The correspondence suggested that Mr Knauf was concerned about Ms Cohen herself, indicating that she was experiencing extreme “stress”.
The Sussexes have strongly denied the allegations.
When bullying allegations first emerged, Meghan’s representatives said she rejected the allegations as the “latest attack on her character.”
They said it was particularly unfair when the duchess had been “the target of bullying and is deeply committed to supporting those who have experienced pain and trauma”.
In his best-selling memoir Spare, published in January last year, Harry lashed out at the claims, saying: “It was so outrageous that even though Meg and I proved his lie with a 25-page report to HR full of evidence , it was It’s going to be very difficult for me to ignore it.
The Palace’s final report was kept private to protect those involved, but there is no doubt that there was a growing sense of concern or that the dispute was becoming personal.
As I record in my book, Revenge, William told Harry that Meghan’s behavior was unacceptable and that Cohen and others suspected that Meghan had never intended to give up her career and become a loyal member of the family.
Did Meghan want to return to the United States, William wondered?
As their conversation became heated, William brought up staff complaints about being bullied by Meghan.
Harry was outraged, but the accusations, justified or not, were a fact.
So was a certain level of staff turnover.
Katrina McKeever, a member of Kate’s communications team, had recently resigned. Kate believed her departure had been prompted by Meghan’s criticism of her performance in the run-up to the wedding.
After Katrina McKeever, pictured, quit the then-Duchess of Cambridge’s communications team, Kate believed Meghan’s criticism had provoked it.
Melissa Toubati, a personal assistant who appears alongside Meghan, was allegedly left “traumatized” by Meghan’s unreasonable behavior in meeting her “unattainably precise demands.”
Meghan denied being critical and reportedly said, “It’s not my job to coddle people,” according to The Times.
Others had echoed Ms. McKeever’s complaints to Jason Knauf.
Melissa Toubati, another personal assistant, had also resigned. According to news reports, Ms Toubati was allegedly left “traumatised” by Meghan’s unreasonable behavior in meeting her “unattainably precise demands”.
Her departure was blamed on a tirade by Meghan, angry that the embroidered blankets for guests at a shooting weekend were not the correct shade of red.
The Sussexes were said to be not disappointed by Toubati’s departure, but disagreed about the reasons.
In 2021, Meghan told a global audience on Oprah that palace officials had not only done little to protect her, but had gone so far as to conspire against her and Harry.
Such a claim will have been deeply disappointing to Ms Cohen and other former employees, as they believed they had worked tirelessly to help the couple.
It is extremely unfortunate that the bullying complaints have not had any resolution either way.
To date, the palace lawyer’s investigation remains under lock and key, a situation that is harsh for the accusers and unfair for the accused.
Jason Knauf’s leaked email correspondence has given us a starting point, but until a few days ago, Mrs. Cohen and the palace staff had remained silent.
Now, finally, that dam has been broken, and I have no doubt that more will now emerge.
The trickle of information will soon become a stream.
It is not about prejudging the matter or saying what the verdict will be.
But it is a great discredit to the Palace that, whatever truth we arrive at, it has to emerge in this painful and unsatisfactory way.
Tom Bower is the author of Revenge, Meghan, Harry and the Windsor War