Ruth Dodsworth not letting coercive control 'define life'

A broadcaster who endured almost a decade of domestic and coercive abuse said she will not let it define the rest of her life.

Ruth Dodsworth's ex-husband Jonathan Wignall was jailed in April for stalking and coercive control.

The ITV Wales presenter said he would call up to 200 times a day, demand she leave work to eat lunch with him and delete contacts from her phone.

She now explores the form of abuse in a new TV programme.

In Controlled By My Partner? The Hidden Abuse, previously unseen police footage will be shown of the moment Wignall was arrested.

The nightclub owner was sentenced to three years in prison after subjecting her to a nine-year campaign of abuse.

On the show, Ms Dodsworth said it took her years to recognise she was being abused by her husband of nearly 18 years.

"I had no idea that the threats and manipulation my ex-husband used for almost a decade were actually a pattern of criminal behaviour.

"He would call me dozens of times a day, wanting to know where I was and who I was with. He would check my phone and even delete contacts from it.

"He would turn up at my workplace, or insist that I leave the studio to eat lunch with him in his car."

The 46-year-old said the thought of Wignall being released after serving less than half his sentence is "terrifying".

She told BBC Radio Wales: "My fear is that when he was initially sentenced, the judge told him 'you are a danger to your ex wife and children, and you are evil'.

"A year behind bars, how much of that will have changed?

"My worry is he will come out a far more dangerous person than he was when he went in and I am really scared about him coming out.

"It wasn't until my own children began to fear for my safety that I realised what was going on wasn't normal.

"I thought it was the right thing to do to keep my family together, I didn't want my children to come from a broken home."

Her 18-year-old daughter Grace said "this was our lives" because "it was normal for us".

"And then all of a sudden we're having all these professionals telling us that's not right, and everything we've known is pretty much gone."

The offence of coercive and controlling behaviour was only recognised as a crime in England and Wales from December 2015.

Similar offences were brought into law in Scotland in 2019 and Northern Ireland last year.

Since 2015 police forces in England and Wales have had more than 60,000 reports of the crime, with domestic abuse being reported more than three million times in the same time period.

Despite suffering abuse at the hands of Wignall for almost a decade, Ms Dodworth said she is now happy and remarried.

She wants people going through what she did to know: "You can have a life after domestic abuse and coercive control and that's what I'm doing."

PC Mike Taggart, from North Wales Police, said officers need to be trained to ensure victims feel safe when they report abuse.

"We can still take that action against that perpetrator and hopefully ultimately protect the victim."

The Home Office said its Domestic Abuse Act would later this year mean the offence of controlling or coercive behaviour could apply to intimate partners, ex-partners or family members, regardless of whether the victim and perpetrator live together, offering wider protection to victims.