Weather Presenter Ruth Dodsworth Opens Up About Ex-Husband's Controlling Behaviour | This Morning

[Music] during their marriage itv weather presenter ruth dodges was subjected to years of harassment at the hands of her ex-husband jason wigner yes last week he was sentenced to three years in jail for cohesive and controlling behaviour which included placing a tracker on her car and opening her mouth and following her to work well in the hope of helping others ruth's joining us today to share her story this is uh i mean you're used to being on the telly very yes being on the telly this is a tricky one this i would say is possibly the hardest thing i've ever done i've been with itv for 25 years now and it's lovely to be here and obviously to talk to you guys but it's something i never saw coming um the details of my case um were never meant to be public for one reason or another they were suddenly out there this time last week when when jonathan was sentenced and within an hour every last detail of my victim impact statement that i'd read to the court was suddenly everywhere and in a sense it has been the hardest time but because that decision to go public was almost taken away from me it's been the best thing in hindsight that's ever happened well certainly your aim now and your aim today is to is to to say directly to anyone watching you have to see if you can spot the signs which are not easy and they're subtle and they're insidious but when you do spot them seek help because people say to you why didn't you get out it's not that easy oh absolutely i mean i was married to this man for 18 years and i think sometimes within a marriage itself you know at first you try to make it work you think well okay that's happened let's move on and you make excuses you make you try to reason you try to justify you put on this you plaster your smile on your face and you know as you and i know life isn't always as it seems and especially in a job like ours where there's an expectation that you know you smile and and you're happy and and sometimes as i've said that couldn't have been further from the truth and that in a sense made it that much harder but it also made me more determined to try and make it work and it just didn't it just didn't in the end so you know as i can only imagine these sorts of things sort of progress over time so if you don't mind can we go back to the start so when you first met jonathan was was there was there instant triggers that you noticed or was it was it not that way at all no looking back and hindsight is an amazing thing isn't it looking back on it now i can see that the signs were there it we we were happy but there were moments where his temper became obvious and at first it was not towards you it was towards other people at first towards other people but i think when you know when you're with someone that you you love you take things out on the nearest and dearest don't you and so as that person closest to him as things started to fall down elsewhere business went through um you know financial difficulties i very much became the focus of his temper his anger i was the one person that he could direct it at and you know looking back as i said with with us a horror now that i could see the signs but you almost don't want to admit it to yourself and i think that in a sense it has been quite a difficult thing even even for me to do now yeah the very phrase domestic abuse coercive control i i find quite difficult to say because for a long long time i didn't recognize or put myself in that in that category and so it did progress yes it did get considerably worse at its worst what what was it like at his worst and at its worst um just under two years ago when really things escalated i'd been in work i worked for itv in wales i'm as a weather presenter i'd been in during that week he'd been phoning me hundreds and hundreds of times a day turning up at the office text messages where are you who you were who was i with that particular day he started drinking early in the day and by the time my children got home from school they were phoning me mate saying mum don't come home don't come home he's going to kill you and i think for me that was a turning point i didn't go home that night because i think if i had i wouldn't be here now in any way shape or form and um you know it took to confiding to someone else for them to say ruth if you don't ring the police i will yes and and that really changed everything this is a man who whilst you were sleeping held your thumb on your phone so he could open it whilst you were asleep he'd was standing outside the bathroom door when you were in there you were not allowed to see anyone who completely isolated you from friends and family people were frightened of him and didn't come around to see you yeah um and you don't realize that isolation until again you look back on it yeah um his paranoia his his jealousy i think you know i work in a very public job i meet a lot of people and and you know to him he couldn't he couldn't handle that and therefore ev every male i i met was a potential affair and and you know that jealousy escalated to the point where as i said you know he offered to pay my children money to go into my phone um you know i have a i have a my phone is an itv phone yours is probably the same you have a pin number i mean you know you need you need a pin number to get into you know to get a drink of water these days so there was nothing unusual in that um but i hadn't realized hundreds and hundreds of photographs of me some i was aware of and awful i wasn't aware of your car tracker on my car after he was first arrested um which we only noticed because you know he he would start to turn up in places where he he had no no reason to be right um and and i i got suspicious at that point and in fact someone else said i think there's something on your car and and there it was so so the coercive control then led to the stalking conviction and um it's it's been really really tough yeah it's been really tough i mean one i was reading your breath this morning and one thing that really stood out to me and really upset me was when you said that i would sometimes wait for him to go to sleep because i thought it would be all right in a minute because he'll be asleep and i suppose it's those little things that have been building up over time and then you get to that point where your brain sort of goes okay i can't i can't do this anymore if if i i could i could lie there and wait for him to go to sleep first then i knew i'd be okay if i went to sleep first it wasn't on his terms and and you know he would slap me across the face to wake me up um and you know this this is a man that i loved and was father to my children and you know i think as that behavior escalated i i realized that it wasn't right but when you're in that situation and you're isolated from your family your friends it's it's degrading it's dehumanizing it's so very difficult to ask for help and you know so many people said why didn't you why didn't you speak to us even my own family are struggling to sort of understand why i didn't ask them talk to them and i'm lucky that i've got all that support but i i couldn't and it's so easy and i understand that it's so easy to say get out ask for help it's not easy and that's what i wanted to say as hard as hard as it is ask just ask because i look back now i wish i'd done it sooner but i would not be here i wouldn't be alive if i hadn't asked for help yeah and you know that's that's where i was at in the end you know that's the reality he's left you with with all of that mental damage but at the same time also he's left the family destitute because absolutely he spent he spent all the money he had no clue um you don't even have a house no i mean you know i lived you know the instagram life i had a beautiful home also i thought you know there'd be car beautiful children the home i thought we owned we didn't was rented and so the mortgage i thought was actually and he hadn't paid that for years there are debts in my name hundreds of thousands of pounds things that were taken out that i know nothing about um i've worked for 25 years every single day for itv and i have apart from a very small pension i have nothing to show for it um i won't be able to get a mortgage i won't be able to take out a credit card i have a very basic bank account and that's my reality now but as hard as that is that that's nothing because i've got my children um i'm sitting here talking to you now i've got family people around me who love me and my case is just one of so many and i'm so so lucky and actually to be given this platform and and you know to use this this public arena now to say to anybody as hard as it seems and there are dark days and you know i was at my lowest ebb and paramedics saved me the police saved me the crown prosecution service have saved me and if they can do that for me they can do that for anybody out there absolutely and also you do one important point was that you were believed you were listening yes i didn't think i would and again because i was married to him it's effectively my word against his but there was evidence there ultimately and um not being believed was was something that i really really was frightened of yeah that must be a fear but but i was believed and i would say to anybody you will be believed to well you're very brave and we really appreciate it and you will certainly have helped a lot of people watching today thank you so thank you very much indeed absolutely thank you what's the weather going to be like sunshine all the way you

Channel: This Morning

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Length: 9min 43sec (583 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021