Jorge Arantes (pictured with JK Rowling on their wedding day) rejected the Harry Potter author's description of their 'violent marriage', complaining: 'She shouldn't have involved me.'
JK Rowling's first husband broke his silence last night to deny any domestic or sexual violence - but bizarrely admitted slapping her.
Jorge Arantes rejected the Harry Potter author's description of their 'violent marriage', complaining: 'She shouldn't have involved me.'
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Mr Arantes insisted he had not yet read his former wife's bombshell essay, in which she spoke of the scars of her past.
He declared: 'There was no domestic violence, nor sexual violence.' Extraordinarily, he added: 'I slapped her, but I didn't abuse her.'
Mr Arantes also told The Sun: ‘There was not sustained abuse.
I'm not sorry for slapping her.'
It came as Miss Rowling suffered a major backlash over her decision to go public on her views about transgender issues, which she said was influenced by her own experience of domestic violence and a serious sexual assault as a young woman.
A parade of Harry Potter stars - who all owe their Hollywood careers to Miss Rowling - lined up to put the boot in, rejecting her concerns about transgender issues.
The author wrote on Wednesday night that she was 'deeply concerned' some young people faced enormous pressures to switch genders.
She even claimed she might have changed to become a man herself to turn herself into the son her father openly wanted, if she had faced the influences around today when she was a girl.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Mr Arantes (pictured) insisted he had not yet read his former wife's bombshell essay, in which she spoke of the scars of her past
Turbulent: JK Rowling with first husband Jorge Arantes, who has admitted to 'slapping' her
Amid the fallout yesterday, a British school dropped 'J K Rowling' as a name for one of its houses because she was 'no longer felt to be an appropriate role model'.
And even Miss Rowling's favourite Harry Potter website, The Leaky Cauldron - the biggest fan site in the world - suggested followers should stop buying her books or watching her films.
In her deeply personal and compelling 3,600-word essay posted to her website, Miss Rowling described the dangers of young people being convinced to change their gender and then regretting it.
She savaged 'trans activists' who disagreed with her, and revealed some of the vile insults they had thrown at her for speaking her mind.
She cited one of her five reasons for going public as having suffered a 'violent marriage' to Portuguese former TV journalist Mr Arantes, to whom she had a whirlwind marriage in the 1990s.
She also said she had been the victim of a sexual assault in her twenties, but did not identify her attacker.
Yesterday, speaking at his home in Porto, northern Portugal, Mr Arantes told the Daily Mail: 'I'm not exactly aware of what she said but I have nothing to add.
Ms Rowling made her astonishing revelations, describing herself as 'a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor' in a 3,663 word essay posted on her personal website on Wednesday
On Wednesday, the author revealed in a 3,500-word blog post that she was a 'domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor' and was in a 'violent' first marriage to Portuguese journalism student Jorge Arantes.
Pictured: The former couple with their daughter Jessica, who is now 26
JK Rowling alongside her father Peter Rowling and step-mother Janet after a degree ceremony at Exeter University in 2000
'There was no domestic violence, nor sexual violence.
I don't know exactly what she said, I still have to read it, but I'm not interested in commenting or refuting.
'I don't know why she involved me, if she involved me and if she was really referring to me. Apparently it has to do with transsexuals and transphobia.
I have nothing to do with that and she shouldn't involve me.'
Mr Arantes, 52, was quoted in the past as saying he and Miss Rowling had split up after an argument when their daughter Jessica, now 26, was a baby, saying: 'I admit I slapped her very hard in the street.'
Yesterday he insisted: 'I slapped her, but I didn't abuse her.'
Rowling made the decision to move to Porto after he mother passed away in December 1990, and met Mr Arantes two years later.
The couple were brought together by a love of books and married in October 1992, but Rowling left with her daughter - who was only two months old at the time - in November the next year.
Rowling returned the UK and set up up in Edinburgh where she would get her life-changing publishing deal.
Mr Arantes came to find her in 1994 to see his young daughter but Rowling took out a restraining order against him.
He currently lives in Porto in a townhouse owned by his mother.
Her remarks led to a backlash from stars including Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter in the film franchise of the series, and Eddie Redmayne, who stars in Rowling's Fantastic Beasts films
Radcliffe responded to Ms Rowling in an article for The Trevor Project, a US-based organisation supporting focused on suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning youth
Amid the fallout from Miss Rowling's essay yesterday, Bonnie Wright, the actress who played Ginny Weasley in the Harry Potter films, joined her co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson in choosing to attack the creator of the roles that made them famous.
Miss Wright, 29, tweeted from Los Angeles: 'If Harry Potter was a source of love and belonging for you, that love is infinite and there to take without judgment or question. Transwomen are Women. I see and love you, Bonnie x.'
Miss Watson, 30, who played Hermione Granger, told her 29million Twitter followers: 'Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren't who they say they are.'
Miss Watson, who is a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, wrote: 'I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.'
Many questioned the timing of their social media posts because they came hours after the author spoke about escaping her 'violent marriage' and also revealed she was seriously sexually assaulted as a young woman.
Fantastic Beast And Where To Find Them star Eddie Redmayne, 38, joined in the chorus of critics towards the author
Emma Watson, who played Hermione in the Harry Potter films, also criticised Ms Rowling in a series of tweets on Wednesday
One Twitter user replied to Miss Watson: 'I've never seen someone bite the hand that fed them so callously.
She just disclosed her sexual assault and this is your response.
Your 'feminism' is back to front. It's a joke.' Others told Miss Wright: 'You clearly haven't read J K's essay' and 'You would have been nothing without her. Shame on you.'
Warner Bros, the Hollywood studio behind the blockbuster Harry Potter films, issued a carefully-worded statement praising 'the work of our storytellers who give so much of themselves' while calling for 'understanding of all communities and all people'.
The Weald School in Billingshurst, West Sussex, wrote to parents announcing that it was scrapping plans to use J K Rowling's name because she was 'no longer felt to be an appropriate role model'.
Deputy headteacher Sarah Edwards said: 'J K Rowling has tweeted some messages which are considered to be offensive to the LGBT+ community (specifically, transphobic) and we feel that we do not wish to be associated with these views.'
Instead the house will be named Blackman, after children's author Malorie Blackman.
However, support for Miss Rowling came from thousands of tweets and messages backing her views that young people may regret changing gender if they are rushed into it.
Gingerbread, a charity supporting single parents which Miss Rowling has long championed, said: 'We remain grateful for her patronage.'
JK Rowling has been branded a heretic for standing up to the mob, writes Joanna Williams
A mob of the perpetually outraged is currently tearing through society demanding the removal of anything it finds offensive.
Statues are being toppled, Gone With The Wind has been removed from the HBO channel, and golden oldie comedies are being pulled from Netflix and elsewhere.
And now that mob has JK Rowling, creator of Harry Potter, in their sights.
That's right. The author beloved of millennials everywhere has become a target of its more woke cohort for having the temerity to challenge the transgender lobby.
She finds herself in the firing line for having picked up on a campaign by an international development organisation that talked of the need to create 'a more equal post-Covid-19 world for people who menstruate'.
It was a strangulated attempt to avoid offending men who identify as women, and Rowling called it out for what it was on Twitter.
'I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?' she wrote.
J K Rowling has revealed that she was the victim of a 'serious sexual assault' when she was aged in her 20s
She was pointing out that we live in a world where the word 'woman' is being casually erased.
A 'person' who menstruates, has breasts, a womb and ovaries is a woman. It should not be a thought-crime to say so.
I'm not a feminist and I have every sympathy for those who find themselves trapped in the wrong body. But turning the word 'woman' into an unutterable curse-word rides back on over a century of women's hard-won rights.
And, of all people, the impeccably liberal-minded Rowling should be safe from today's 'cancel culture'.
She supports Amnesty International, she's donated serious money to the Labour Party and she's been a critic of Brexit, for goodness sake!
Her life story, her rags-to-riches tale of an impoverished single mum, sitting in an Edinburgh cafe working away at her Potter stories, should make her a feminist role model.
Her crime, ironically, is to deny the power of magic.
She believes it takes more than uttering a few special words for a man to transform into a woman, without any process at all - to say simply that because he identifies as a woman, he is a woman.
Today, daring to say that being female is more than just a 'feeling' and that there may be circumstances in which women need to be reassured that only other women are present - in lavatories, changing rooms, spas, etc - is enough to have you branded a witch.
How did we get click here for info?
In March last year, a researcher called Maya Forstater lost her job at a London think tank for having expressed the view that people cannot change their biological sex.
And now that mob has JK Rowling, creator of Harry Potter, in their sights, writes Joanna Williams
When the case came to court in December, the judge upheld her dismissal and described her views on sex and gender as 'absolutist' and 'incompatible with human dignity and the fundamental rights of others'.
It's incredible that a woman can lose her livelihood simply for stating biological facts.
Yet hardly anyone challenged this unprecedented attack on Forstater's freedom of speech and freedom of conscience.
JK Rowling was one of the few to speak out. The author tweeted: 'Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who'll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?'
This one tweet, this one small act of sisterly solidarity, sparked a Twitter meltdown. Rowling was labelled a 'TERF' - Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist - the go-to insult hurled at women who transgress new social norms established primarily by men.
Not that long ago, it was considered grossly offensive to insult women by calling them derogatory names.
Now, the hierarchy of victimhood has been transformed and women - females - can be subjected to no end of abuse if it's for the greater good of protecting males who, complete with penis, chest hair and stubble, demand the world acknowledges they are women.
Thankfully, Rowling was not cowed by the bullies.
So, three cheers for her for standing up for women - except that's not what is happening. She is being grossly insulted all over again. Nothing is off limits when it comes to taking down this modern-day heretic.
She has explained why she won't bow down to the demands of the transgender activists.
With painful honesty, she has detailed the sexual assault she suffered and the abusive marriage she left.
Understandably, she thinks women fleeing such relationships should have female-only spaces. She's revealed how her father wanted a son and, if she was a child today, she could have easily found herself heading for surgery.
But nothing appeases the mob.
Still the insults are hurled. In 2020, women are expected to know their place: Erased from public record until required as a target for abuse. It's time we stood up to this vile PC misogyny.
- Dr Joanna Williams is director of the think tank Cieo and author of Women Vs Feminism.
This is an edited version of an article in American Conservative
