The calendar in Rhianon Bragg’s farmhouse kitchen is packed over the next few days. As a mother of four, a smallholder and an active member of her remote Welsh hillside community, she usually has a helter-skelter schedule.
But Thursday this week is blank. That is the day a Parole Board panel meets to discuss whether a man who subjected Bragg to a horrifying stalking campaign, culminating in her being held hostage at gunpoint for eight hours, can be released from prison.
“I’m trying to fit everything in now because I have no idea what is going to happen after Thursday,” Bragg said. “It’s terrifying to think he could be released, let alone may return anywhere near here. His imprisonment may end and ours begin.
“I don’t know whether I’ll be able to walk safely on the mountain, whether my children will be able to freely go out and about. I don’t think we’ll be able to go to the school Christmas fair on Friday because we’d have to come back here after dark. I feel like a target. My mental health has been so severely damaged – it impacts on every aspect of my life.”
Bragg, 50, is disappointed that the Parole Board has ruled that her tormenter’s hearing will not be held in public – as it could be – after his legal team argued this could increase his anxiety and be detrimental to his health.
She says her circumstances, living in a very isolated place in the foothills of Snowdonia, make her and her family particularly vulnerable and she has lost confidence in the police over their handling of her case.
“Nobody can hear you scream here,” she said. “We’re about a mile from the centre of the village. Before this, I would have described it as a place of peaceful seclusion; now it feels like a place of isolation and vulnerability.”
While Bragg spoke, workers were setting up extra security, including lights and CCTV cameras. “It’s called target hardening. We’re having to make the house a bit of a prison,” she said. “How can you call for help, with patchy mobile signal and ropey internet? How many police officers are available and what geographic area are they expected to cover? How long will it take for that help to arrive? Stalkers don’t need skills to operate here, the topography is perfect. We can be seen for miles. And they could be easily hidden in front of us.”
Bragg, a clergyman’s daughter, began a relationship with Gareth Wyn Jones, a mechanic, after moving to her family’s smallholding in Rhosgadfan, Gwynedd, after a divorce and following her father’s death.
During the five-year relationship, Jones, now 58, frequently verbally abused and physically assaulted her, and when she ended the relationship in 2019 he began stalking and threatening her. During this time she also reported to police that he had menaced her children. Jones was arrested and his licensed firearms seized, but no further action was taken and his weapons were returned.
Then in August 2019, he ambushed her and held her at gunpoint for eight hours overnight in a barn at the smallholding and his house. “All night he ranted, asking if I loved him, telling me what a hard life he’d had. There were several times when I thought I wouldn’t see my children again. I remember thinking I hope they know how much I love them.”
The next morning, Bragg persuaded Jones to let her go to a doctor’s appointment because he felt the relationship was back on. She told the GP what was happening. The surgery was locked down and the police were called.
In February 2020, Jones was sentenced to four and a half years in custody followed by a five-year licence on release for stalking, false imprisonment, making threats to kill and possession of a firearm.
Bragg has been granted a restraining order that states Jones cannot come within 800 metres of her house on his release – but she was not consulted about the details of this before it was made and feels it is inadequate. “That works in a city, with shops on every corner and plenty of people about, but is meaningless in a small Welsh village where farmhouses are spread out,” she said. “That distance lets him be in the centre of the village.”
Bragg said the health and wellbeing of her family had been deeply affected and she fears it will have a lifelong impact on the children. She can feel retraumatised by scenes in films and books. “I went to a Bond film and spent the entire film, heart racing, bricking myself, staring at the carpet – all I could see was him, furious, screaming, a gun pointing at me. Your body stores the trauma. It doesn’t leave.”
There was a terrible moment when she was reading the David Walliams children’s book Gangsta Granny to a child. “It was the description of black leather gloves worn by a policeman. Woomph – straight back. He had been wearing black shooting gloves and I’m instantly transported.”
Jones is now eligible for parole and Bragg was keen for the hearing to be held in public so that she and others could fully understand the process and the result.
The justice secretary, Dominic Raab, did not raise objections but Jones’s lawyer argued it would make him anxious. “If the hearing were in public, this would increase his anxiety,” he said. “He has concerns about media interest, safety for his family and the potential impact on any resettlement plan. A public hearing could be detrimental to his health.”
Caroline Corby, the chair of the Parole Board for England and Wales, ruled there were no “special features of this particular case” and concluded: “Mr Jones has mental health issues which could be exacerbated by a public hearing.”
Bragg said: “I wonder if I will be informed of what happens. Maybe there’ll be restrictions, maybe he’ll be tagged. I hope he isn’t released until he’s served his full sentence. But I have to assume the worst-case scenario until I’m told differently – that he’ll be back in this area.”
Bragg lost faith in North Wales police over the way they handled her complaints and handed Jones his weapons back. She is also disappointed that the force has not used highly regarded work from the criminologist Jane Monckton Smith on understanding the risk stalkers pose, though the other three Welsh forces have introduced it into training.
“Why the hell haven’t they done that?” said Bragg. “While people are thinking about doing things, lives are being wrecked and women are being slaughtered.”
Plaid Cymru politicians are supporting Bragg. Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid leader in Westminster, said: “Time and again we hear that the offender’s needs override those of their victim and the wider community in criminal justice procedural priorities.”
The Plaid Senedd member Siân Gwenllian said: “The criminal justice system must prioritise the rights of the innocent victim and their family over the rights of a perpetrator of serious crime.”
A Parole Board spokesperson said: “Parole reviews are undertaken thoroughly and with extreme care. Protecting the public is our number one priority.”
The North Wales police chief constable, Amanda Blakeman, said the force worked with a range of professionals to continue to safeguard victims.
She said: “Domestic abuse and stalking harassment is devastating for the victims and their families. Breaking this cycle of abuse remains a priority for us at North Wales police. I have reached out to Jane Monckton Smith in order to understand the work she has done.”
Bragg says she will not give up her farmhouse. “This is home, my father is buried in the field. It is the only place that’s ever felt like home. Why should we move? My children have friendship groups. If you don’t stand up to bullies, they get away with it, nothing ever changes,” she said.
“But I really cannot think past the date of the parole hearing. My body is locked with tension. I just want us to be able to live in our home freely, free of the threat from a known perpetrator. It feels like a massive ask but it shouldn’t.”
