JK Rowling’s abusive ex-husband claims he helped her write Harry Potter book... and brands her ‘delirious’
THE abusive former husband of JK Rowling has hit back at claims he held her first Harry Potter manuscript ‘hostage’ to stop her leaving him, saying he even helped to write the hit.
In a podcast, the multi-millionaire author said ‘controlling’ Jorge Arantes kept the pages of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as their marriage broke down.
Talking on The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, she told of fearing the former Portuguese TV reporter ‘would burn the pages’ and started secretly photocopying them.
But Arantes, 54, who has admitted slapping Ms Rowling during their turbulent marriage, denied taking the book and made the extraordinary claim that he had helped to write it.
In a bizarre rant from his home in Portugal, he told the Mail: ‘I don’t know why she is saying what she is now, maybe she is delirious from three years of Covid lockdown.
‘I was surprised when I read about this. I deny it. It doesn’t make any sense. Why would I do something like that? Maybe you should ask her.
‘When she was writing the book,
I was participating in it, she was reading it out to me, and I was reading it to her.
‘The first book was fascinating; the writing was wonderful, and I always liked it because we shared a passion for literature, and especially literature for children.
‘The project was for seven books and I was very involved with the first one and she knows that.
‘She started writing it when we were together.’
Arantes and Ms Rowling, 57, met in a bar and wed in 1992 in Porto after a whirlwind romance when she had moved there to teach English after her mother’s death.
He is said to now live a solitary life in the same city where their love blossomed over a shared interest in Jane Austen.
The couple had a daughter, Jessica, now 29, but the author left a year later after Arantes dragged her out of the house and attacked her. In 2001, she married doctor Neil Murray.
Ms Rowling hinted at violence in her relationship with Arantes before revealing in 2020 how he had beaten her in the street.
He was unrepentant, telling reporters that he hit her hard in the face and did not regret it. Arantes also revealed that he has no relationship with his daughter.
On the podcast, Ms Rowling said: ‘The marriage had turned very violent and very controlling. He was searching my handbag every time I came home. I haven’t got a key to my own front door because he’s got to control the front door. I think he knew, or suspected, that I was going to try and bolt again.’
The author described living in ‘a horrible state of tension’ because she had to hide her wish to leave.
She went on: ‘And yet the manu script kept growing. I’d continue to write. He knew what that manuscript meant to me because at one point he took the manuscript and hid it and that was his hostage.’
Ms Rowling told how she became determined to leave and would secretly ‘take a few pages ages of the manuscript into work every day – just a few pages so that he wouldn’t realise anything was missing – and photocopy it’.
She said: ‘In a cupboard in the staff room, bit by bit, a photocopied manuscript grew and grew and grew because I suspected that, if I wasn’t able to get out with everything, he would burn it or take it or hold it hostage.
‘That manuscript still meant so much to me. That was the thing that I actually prioritised for saving. The only thing I prioritised beyond that, obviously, was my daughter, but at that point she’s still inside me so she’s as safe as can be in that situation.’
Describing how she walked out on Arantes, Ms Rowling said:
‘There came a night where he became very angry and I cracked and I said, “I want to leave”.
‘He became very violent and he said, “You can leave but you’re not getting Jessica, I’m keeping her”.
‘So I put up a fight and I paid the price. There was a violent scene which terminated with me lying in the street.
‘I went to the police and filed a complaint and the next day went back to the house with the police and got Jessica.’
A spokesman for Ms Rowling said the writer did not want to comment on her former husband’s latest claims.
Ms Rowling and Arantes are not thought to have had any contact since their marriage ended and Jessica uses the surname Rowling.
‘I was involved and she knows that’