JK Rowling's ex-husband shamelessly admits to slapping her but says he has no regrets: 'I'm not sorry'
JK Rowling's abusive first husband has admitted that he slapped her but says he does not feel any regret. The 52-year-old Jorge Arantes said that he isn't sorry for doing so and had not even bothered to read the accusations of domestic abuse made by Rowling. He said, "I slapped Joanne — but there was not sustained abuse. I’m not sorry for slapping her," he said.
He added, "If she says that, that's up to her. It's not true I hit her," according to The Sun. However, he was then asked again about his own admission a decade ago when he admitted that he had hit her on the same night that she had left him. "Yes. It is true I slapped her. But I didn’t abuse her," Arantes said. On Wednesday, June 10, Rowling had revealed that she had suffered from domestic abuse during her first marriage to Arantes. She also said she was sexually assaulted but did not identify who had done so.
She revealed that she had previously never spoken about the incidents in order to protect her and Arantes' daughter Jessica who is currently 27. Arrantes had also said, "It was a long time ago and I don’t want to talk. I don’t speak to Joanne anymore and I don’t want to have this conversation." He told The Sun, "I don’t care about it. What she says is up to her. It’s her responsibility, not mine. There was not sustained abuse."
Rowling had recently made headlines over a series of transphobic tweets. She had posted a response to a headline where she referred to "people who menstruate." She said, "I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?"
Many people slammed her and said that it was not only women born as women who menstruate. In response, Rowling had said, "My life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it's hateful to say so." Her comments received a lot of criticism and backlash online. While talking about the criticism, Rowling opened up in a lengthy and emotional post online. She wrote, "I've been in the public eye now for over 20 years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor."
"This isn't because I'm ashamed those things happened to me, but because they're traumatic to revisit and remember. I'm mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who've been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces," she added.
She is currently married to Neil Murray and is happy. "I managed to escape my first violent marriage with some difficulty. But I’m now married to a truly good and principled man, safe and secure in ways I never in a million years expected to be," Rowling opened up. "However, the scars left by violence and sexual assault don’t disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you've made," she added.