JK Rowling has revealed she has been ‘scammed a few times’ as it emerged she has donated around £200 million to charity.
While writing the sixth installment of her globally recognized Harry Potter wizarding series, the author encountered a photo of a small five-year-old Czech boy named Vasek Knotek, whose face was pressed against barbed wire.
Moved by this image, the passionate 59-year-old started corresponding with MEP Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, the former director of fundraising for Save the Children, expressing her desire to support disadvantaged young people in the ex-Soviet country.
In 2010, a year later, Rowling and Baroness Nicholson established a charity called Children’s High Level Group, later rebranded as Lumos, inspired by a charm featured in one of Rowling’s books – symbolizing a guiding light in the most challenging of circumstances.
In the two decades since the author first saw the image of the Czechian orphanage, the Harry Potter author has given £63 million to the charity aiding children in the eastern European country.
According to the Sunday Times, in total, Rowling has donated nearly £200 million to three charities – Lumos, the Volant Charitable Trust and the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic.
However, the author also shared how she has been forced to exercise more ‘due diligence’, to ensure her cash is going to those who need it, as she revealed she had ‘definitely’ been ‘scammed a few times’.
Retelling her agony of skimming through countless letters begging for help, she shared how once she had received correspondence from a Lloyd’s investor who had lost a considerable amount of money in 2005.
‘They told me how lucky I was to have grown up poor, so I’d never know the agony of losing a fortune, and asked me to give them money because they and their spouse could no longer afford to go to the opera,’ she told The Sunday Times.
While adding how she is the last person who would complain of her wealthy lifestyle, she explained that life is filled with dilemmas ‘you never dreamt of having to deal with’ when you obtain a great deal of money.
Reflecting on her own difficult childhood in Chepstow, southeast Wales, and then her life in poverty after leaving her short-lived marriage, where she headed to Edinburgh with her infant daughter, Jessica, Rowling shared she would at times go hungry.
‘I prioritised feeding my daughter, but that wasn’t the worst of it. It’s the daily indignities — overwhelmingly, not being able to give your child the things you’d like,’ she said.
‘I remember meeting another mum whose son was the same age as my daughter. He had a roomful of toys. I had a shoebox in which Jessica’s two toys lived. It’s that kind of thing that really gets to you.’
Rowling’s charitable revelation comes shortly after she engages with a furious war of worlds with Boy George after he accused her of hating men amid the Supreme Court’s ruling on the legal status of transgender women.
Rowling, who also writes under the male pen name of Robert Galbraith, blasted the Culture Club singer after he said that she could not tell the difference between a transgender woman and a biological man.
The 63-year-old popstar has expressed support for transgender people online, in line with other stars such as Tilda Swinton and Pedro Pascal , who recently branded Rowling a ‘heinous loser’ on Instagram.
Responding to a tweet suggesting that Pascal – an outspoken supporter of trans rights – was a misogynist, the singer wrote: ‘Stop this nonsense that if you don’t agree with @jk_rowling you hate women. She hates men. This is where this truth lies.
‘She cannot differentiate between a ‘trans’ woman and a biological male. Which is weird with her imagination?’
But Rowling – who now tweets almost daily about what she has called ‘sex-based rights’ – fired back with an eye-rolling emoji and the retort: ‘I do not hate men.’
She wrote: ‘I’m married to a man, George. I do not hate men.
‘I simply live in reality where men – however they identify – commit 98 per cent of sexual assaults, and 88 per cent of victims are female.
‘Trans-identified men are no less likely than other kinds of men to pose a risk to women or girls.’
She did not elaborate on how many of those committing sexual assaults were thought to be trans.
She then added: ‘Accusing me of hating men because I don’t think trans women should be given access to all women-only spaces does rather suggest that… you’re well aware that these are, in fact, men.’
Rowling has been vocal on the subject of trans people for several years; in 2018, a spokesperson explained that her ‘like’ of a tweet calling trans women ‘men in dresses’ had been a ‘middle-aged moment’.
And following the Supreme Court judgment on April 17, Rowling has consistently referred to transgender women as being ‘men’.
The ruling, on an appeal brought by campaign group For Women Scotland, concluded that the legal definition of a woman was that of a biological female, when interpreting the Equality Act.
It has led to the Equality and Human Rights Commission overhauling its rules on single-sex spaces – meaning that even trans people with gender recognition certificates (GRC) are still considered to be their biological birth sex.
MPs have pointed out that the judgment will likely lead to discrimination against those who do not appear traditionally male or female.
