TV presenter says abusive ex gave her no access to her own money

TV presenter Ruth Dodsworth has described how she had to ask her ex-husband for cash to buy herself anything after he gave her "absolutely no access" to her own money.

Dodsworth's former husband Jonathan Wignall was jailed in 2021 for coercive and controlling behaviour and stalking.

Dodsworth, best known for presenting the weather on ITV Wales, said she later discovered she had been left "absolutely penniless" and with debts in her name that she "knew nothing about".

She also recalled the "bewilderment" of reporting Wignall to the police, adding she previously did not know what controlling behaviour was.

Speaking on Ready to Talk with Emma Barnett, Dodsworth said she first met Wignall in her early 20s, adding he "was charismatic, he had money, [and] I just thought 'wow'".

But she said their relationship changed after Wignall's nightclub business started to fail.

"He went from being effectively this larger than life successful business character to almost the other end of the scale," she said.

"What I was earning as a little bit of pocket money suddenly became the be-all-and-end-all… that shift in our relationship probably also marked a shift in his behaviour towards me."

Dodsworth said money was one of the ways Wignall controlled her.

"It happened sort of slowly but surely," she said.

"My salary would go into my bank account but then he would take it out, so I would say in the last few years I had absolutely no access to my own money."

She said having to ask for money allowed Wignall "to maintain that control" and "kept me isolated".

"I had to ask him for money if I wanted to buy a sandwich at lunchtime. I would get the exact amount so he knew I could go and get a meal deal from a local supermarket and it didn't give me the means to go elsewhere, to sort of socialise with work colleagues, who may perhaps have been male."

She said Wignall would give her cash, after her "bank card disappeared and then that was never replaced".

She said he would also turn up at her workplace to "check" what she was doing.

"Part of my job is that I'm away filming, I'm on location. A lot of our crews are male, so I'd have to effectively prove who I was with, show that I was where I said I was, FaceTime him. He would turn up at work just to check."

Her mobile phone, which she had for work, "became a real pinch point for him because he knew that was contact with the outside world".

"I was asleep in the middle of the night one night, woke up and he'd got my thumb on my phone trying to use my thumbprint to open my phone," she said.

She said in the latter years of their marriage she became "terrified" of Wignall.

"My hair was coming out," she said.

"I'd get to work, I'd cry all the way in, I'd go and lock myself in the dressing room, pile as much makeup on as I possibly could.

"It got to a point where I just didn't know how to cope with what was happening to me, against the backdrop of an expectation of being professional."

The night before Wignall was arrested in October 2019, Dodsworth said her children phoned her at work and warned her not to come home.

"The last conversation I had was with a man who was irrational, made no sense, was screaming and shouting [that he was] going to get in the car and drive to ITV to get me, because at this point the children were ringing me saying don't come home," she said.

"They were teenagers, they were young teens, they had the foresight to hide the car keys so he couldn't get in the car, and the foresight to ring me to tell me what was going on."

Dodsworth said the following day, when Wignall was arrested, she went to a local police station where she spent 10 hours making statements "about some of the most intimate, degrading points of my life".

She said she had not known what controlling behaviour was, until a police liaison provided her with a booklet which she described as "an idiot's guide to coercive controlling behaviour" which she said gave her "a moment of clarity… where you think 'oh my gosh, tick tick tick'".

Wignall pleaded guilty to one count of coercive and controlling behaviour and stalking and, in April 2021, he was jailed for three years at Cardiff Crown Court.

He was also given a restraining order against contacting Dodsworth, who described the day of sentencing as challenging.

"Within 20 minutes of him being sentenced my phone was pinging and it was [members of the press saying] 'we were at sentencing, will you talk about it?'" she recalled, adding: "I hadn't seen that coming."

"The next day it was everywhere. I look back now and... the fact that it went public was probably the best thing that ever happened."

But, she added, it felt awful at the time, "because suddenly my neighbours, my family, my colleagues, people I'd never met before, knew about some of the worst moments of my life".

Dodsworth said rebuilding her life had not been easy.

"Suddenly I found myself without a husband, without a bank account, with a credit rating that had been absolutely destroyed."

She said her parents had to act as guarantors so she could rent a home, calling it a "very degrading process".

But she said a "eureka moment" came soon after getting her own bank account, when she went out and bought herself a coffee.

"I didn't have to get a receipt and I didn't have to hand the change back, and I didn't have to explain and I didn't have to ask permission.

"I just bought the coffee, and that might sound like the simplest thing but it was one of the biggest achievements in my new life."

Dodsworth said she wanted to show people "that you can rebuild, you can go on and have a life, and actually I'm having a very happy life".

"I am so lucky that I am here and I will, until the day I die, use my voice and my experience so that we can keep the conversation going and we keep it out there."

If you have been affected by the issues raised in this story, the BBC's Action Line has a list of organisations that can provide support.