(RoyalPatriot.com )- During a recent interview, author J.K. Rowling described how her abusive ex-husband used the manuscript of the first Harry Potter book as a “hostage” to try and keep her from leaving him.
During the first episode of the podcast series “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling,” which premiered this week, the author said that she started taking pages of the Harry Potter manuscript to work so she could photocopy them after she began to suspect that her ex-husband might try to “burn it” if she left him.
Rowling and her ex-husband Jorge Arantes were married in Portugal in 1992 and separated the following year.
The author revealed in 2020 that she was a victim of domestic abuse. Arantes later admitted to the UK Sun that he had “slapped” his ex-wife during their marriage, but claimed that there was no “sustained abuse.”
During the podcast, Rowling said that while she succeeded in leaving her husband several times, she always went back. She said his controlling nature was so pervasive that he even refused to give her a key to the house and would search through her purse whenever she got home.
When she finally decided to leave him, Rowling continued to act as though she was staying to avoid arousing his suspicion. But after the 1993 birth of her daughter Jessica, Rowling decided it was time to leave.
She made plans for her and Jessica to leave for her sister’s in Scotland, but because her husband was holding “hostage” the manuscript for “Harry Potter,” Rowling decided to sneak pages to work every day to photocopy them. She said she would only take a few pages at a time so he would notice they were missing. She kept the photocopy in a staff room cupboard at work and over time, her secret copy “grew and grew.”
Rowling finally moved out with her daughter in 1993 after a particularly violent attack by her ex-husband prompted her to call the police.
The first Harry Potter book was published four years later.
