JK Rowling’s whirlwind marriage to Portuguese violent first husband Jorge Arantes

JK Rowling and her first husband, Jorge Arantes, met in a Portuguese bar while the author was teaching English in a brief romance sparked by a shared love for Jane Austen.

The former television reporter is the father of his 29-year-old daughter Jessica, and had a whirlwind affair with the British writer that led to a marriage that ended in 13 months.

Arantes is said to live a lonely life in Porto, the city where the former couple met more than 30 years ago when JK was 23. After a night of drinking and chatting in the early 1990s, love blossomed upon discovering they had a common interest. in Jane Austen.

But Ms Rowling, now happily married to Dr Neil Murray for the past 21 years, had hinted that there had been violence in their short-lived relationship until 2020, when she revealed that he had hit her on the street. When confronted by reporters, she was unapologetic, admitting that he hit her hard in the face and did not regret it.

And yesterday, the Edinburgh-based author claimed her abusive first husband held the first Harry Potter manuscript “hostage”, the Sorcerer’s Stone, to prevent her from leaving it.

The multiple award-winning author said she was forced to sneak the precious notes out of the house a few pages at a time and photocopy them at work, so worried was she that Arantes would destroy the work that she later transformed her life and turned it into a billion dollar (£850 million) fortune. Arantes, by contrast, reportedly received benefits and did not work for several years.

JK’s ex rarely leaves the house and has not had contact with her since 1993, it has been claimed.

Arantes lives alone on the first floor behind a cemetery and near an art school in the historic part of Porto. For a while he lives in Paris with his brother who works as a travel agent.

While Rowling and Arantes share a daughter, Jessica, 29, they are not believed to have had any contact since the end of their marriage. Jessica uses the last name Rowling.

Neighbors told MailOnline in 2020 that he rarely leaves the apartment, instead spending his days inside listening to loud music.

One said: ‘He doesn’t get up very early, and sometimes we see him in the afternoon.’

Ms Rowling yesterday divulged shocking details of the lengths to which she went to protect her deed and escape her violent marriage in the 1990s.

Speaking to a new podcast, The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, the author said that Arantes “knew what that manuscript meant to me because at one point he took the manuscript and hid it.” That was her hostage.

Ms Rowling has previously spoken out about her experience of violent and coercive domestic abuse at the hands of her first husband, who admitted to slapping her.

The writer, who is now worth £850 million, met Arantes in a bar when she was teaching in Portugal. They have a daughter, Jessica, now 29, who was conceived after Ms Rowling suffered a “traumatic” miscarriage.

Ms Rowling first spoke about the violence she suffered in a personal essay published in the summer of 2020, with Mr Arantes saying he was “not sorry”.

“When I realized that I was definitely going to go,” Rowling told the podcast about that period in her life, “I would take a few pages of the manuscript to work every day, just a few pages so she wouldn’t notice anything.” she was missing and would photocopy it.

‘Little by little in a closet in the staff room, little by little, a photocopied manuscript grew and grew because I suspected that if he couldn’t get away with everything, he would burn it or take it hostage.

‘That manuscript meant a lot to me and it was what I prioritized saving. The only thing I prioritized beyond that was my daughter, but at the time she was still inside of me, so she’s as safe as possible in that situation.”

Describing running away from her husband in 1993, Ms Rowling said: “There came a night when he got really mad at me and I broke down and said ‘I want to go’.” She got very violent and said, “You can leave but you’re not going to get Jessica, I’m keeping her, I’m going to hide her.”

So I fought and paid the price. There was a violent scene that ended with me lying in the street.

The author also said that she was later forced to leave the house she bought in Edinburgh with the money she earned from the first Harry Potter book, published in 1997, because Arantes broke into it after excessive press coverage.

She said: ‘I was so ill prepared for what happened to me. She was changing faster than she could handle and all the time I had this fear lurking around because I know there’s someone out there who doesn’t wish me well.

‘The reason we left the first place was because my ex-husband came and broke in. Moving became quite a pressing problem.

“I was trying to reconcile suddenly having a lot of press interest with really, really wanting to live under the radar for very specific reasons. She lived in a state of real tension that she couldn’t express to many people.’

Ms Rowling has been married to Dr Neil Murray since 2001 and the couple have two children. Arantes could not be reached for comment.

But following Ms Rowling’s revelations in 2020, she told The Sun: “I did slap Joanne across the face, but there was no sustained abuse.” I don’t regret slapping her.

In an earlier conversation about the relationship, he said: “She refused to leave without Jessica and despite my telling her she could come back for her in the morning, there was a violent fight.” I had to drag her out of the house… and I admit I slapped her very hard in the street.