GMB’s Ruth Dodsworth says she’s ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt’ after jailed ex’s lies about owning dream home
GOOD Morning Britain weather presenter Ruth Dodsworth says she’s “hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt” after her jailed husband lied about owning their dream home.
The 46-year-old’s world has been turned upside down by her ex Jonathan Wignall who was last week found guilty of controlling behaviour, harassment and stalking against Ruth.
Since then she’s discovered secret debts her husband racked up while she went out to work as an ITV weather girl – frequently seen on GMB and This Morning.
She told This Morning hosts Phillip Schofield and Rochelle Humes today how her life has been left devastated by his deceit.
Ruth said: “I lived the Instagram life. I had a beautiful home – or so I thought – beautiful car, beautiful children.
“The home I thought we owned, we didn’t. It was rented. So the mortgage I thought we had, we didn’t, and he hadn’t paid it in years.
“There are debts in my name of hundreds of thousands of pounds, things that were taken out that I have no idea about.
“I have worked for 25 years for every single day for ITV and apart from a very small pension I have nothing to show for it.
“I won’t be able to get a mortgage, take out a credit card and I have a very basic bank account. That’s my reality now.”
Ruth – a regular weather presenter on regional news in London and Wales – told how she’s lucky to be alive after her “frighteningly unpredictable and extremely volatile” husband ripped her life apart.
She added: “As hard as that is, that’s nothing because I’ve got my children. I’m sitting here talking to you now with a family around me who love me and my case is just one of many.
“I am so lucky to have been given this platform and to use this public arena to say to anybody, as hard as it seems – and there are dark days – I was at my lowest ebb. But the paramedics saved me, the police saved me, the CPS saved me. If they can do that for me, they can do that for anyone.”
The presenter earlier revealed the horrifying moment her children rung her at work to warn their dad was going to kill her if she came home.
The couple’s children – 17-year-old daughter Grace and son Jack, 16 – witnessed the sickening abuse over a nine-year period, which included controlling behaviour, harassment and stalking.
Bravely speaking out to encourage other victims to seek help, Ruth said: “At its worst, just under two years ago when things really escalated, I had been in work.
“During that week he had been phoning me hundreds and hundreds of times a day, turning up at the office, messages asking me who I was with.
“And that particular day he started drinking early in the day. By the time my children got home from school they were ringing me saying ‘mum, don’t come home. He is going to kill you.’
“For me, that was a turning point. If I had gone home that night, I wouldn’t be here in any shape or form.
“It took confiding in someone else for them to say, ‘Ruth, if you don’t call the police, I will’ and that changed everything.
“I wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t reached out for help.”
Ruth left her husband after 17 years of marriage when he bombarded her with more than 150 phone calls in one day.
After they split, Wignall placed a tracking device under the steering wheel of her car so he could monitor where she was.
The court heard Wignall would also set alarms on his phone for when she was scheduled to present the weather.
Wignall was found guilty of a nine-year period of abuse. He was jailed for three years and handed a restraining order banning him from contacting his wife.