Ruth Dodsworth has revealed her children once warned her not to come home as their dad would kill her.
The ITV weather presenter’s ex-husband Jonathan Wignall was jailed last week for three years for stalking her.
Ruth appeared on Wednesday’s This Morning and bravely discussed Wignall’s controlling and abusive behaviour.
What did Ruth Dodsworth say about her children?
Ruth explained to hosts Phillip Schofield and Rochelle Humes: “At its worst, just under two years ago when really thins escalated, I had been in work.
Read more: Loose Women star Charlene White supports Ruth Dodsworth as she breaks her silence on ex-husband
“During that week he had been phoning me hundreds and hundreds of times a day, turning up at the office, text 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 phoning me saying, ‘Mum, don’t come home. He is going to kill you.'”
She continued: “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 shape or form.
“It took confiding to someone else for them to say, ‘Ruth, if you don’t ring the police, I will’ and that really changed everything.”
Ruth admitted if she didn’t ask for help when she did, she wouldn’t be alive today.
She also said she kept the abuse from her family and friends.
What else did Ruth say?
She added: “Not being believed was something I was really frightened of. But I was believed and I would say to anybody you will be believed too.”
Ruth was married to Wignall for 17 years and they had two teenage children.
Read more: Ruth Dodsworth’s ex-husband jailed for three years for stalking her
Wignall had talked Ruth at work, insisted on going to the ITV studio with her, checked her phone and placed a tracker on her car.
The judge called him a “bully” as he was sentenced to three years.
He’ll be out on remand in 18 months, but a restraining order banning him from contacting Ruth will be in place.
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