An ex-girlfriend of abusive rugby star Stuart Hogg said he led a double life for three years by pretending to be happily married while secretly seeing her. Jilly O’Donnell said she found out he was still with his wife when the ex-Scotland international captain gave a TV interview to reveal they were expecting their fourth child.
The family man and rugby ace, 32, was outed last week as a controlling and manipulative abuser after he pled guilty to a single charge of domestic abuse against now estranged wife Gillian.
If the case had gone to trial, the ex-British and Irish Lions star would have also faced a charge of bombarding Jilly, 47, with hundreds of messages and a barrage of repeated phone calls over a 17-month period despite her begging him to stop.
Jilly has now decided to speak out about the torment she suffered at the hands of Hogg in the belief that many other women have fallen victim to him.
Jilly, a student nurse from Newcastle, said: “His actions and behaviour have caused so much hurt and anger to so many women. He knows that but somehow, he will still end up being the victim.”
She met Hogg when he started liking her photographs on Instagram during the pandemic in 2020. A single parent to three adult children, she said she was in a vulnerable position during lockdown but was flattered by the attention from Hogg who was 15 years younger than her.
Hogg, who was a full-back with Premiership side Exeter Chiefs at the time, told Jilly that he was separated but still living with his wife for the sake of their three young children.
She said: “We confided in each other, became best friends. He became everything to me. He would often tell me he liked that we had skin on skin contact, he missed that contact with another human being.
“Over three years, we would meet up for walks, go hiking across Dartmoor, message, call, Facetime all the time. We would go swimming every morning before he headed to work. He would call me from the dressing room and immediately after a big Scotland game.
“He would stay out drinking for hours and I’d pick him up at 5am with a drink in his hand. I had no reason to believe he had anyone else to go home to and that he was still happily married. I was naive.”
In March 2023, Hogg announced his intention to retire from professional rugby after the upcoming Rugby World Cup. He later revised this and in July 2023 announced his immediate retirement from the sport. Hogg has since emerged from retirement and now plays for French club Montpellier.
Jilly said the pair parted ways romantically when Hogg and his wife returned home to Hawick, in the Scottish Borders, in April last year. Hogg told Jilly they were only living together in Exeter for the sake of their children – but they were no longer together..
It was in a television interview that Jilly learned Hogg wasn’t separated and his wife was actually pregnant with their fourth child. Jilly said Hogg still tried to convince her that they had a future together but she told him to return to his family.
Jilly said: “I was so shocked, I had no idea. We had been seeing each other plenty of times before he had moved. But he told me, ‘you know what I’m like when I’m drunk’ and said he wouldn’t put me through all this if he didn’t think we had a future and wanted to be with me.”
The pair cut contact when Hogg began a relationship with his current girlfriend, jockey Leonna Mayor. Police interviewed Jilly as a witness and after reviewing the couple’s communication, brought a charge against Hogg for a course of conduct which caused her fear or alarm between April 2023 and August 2024.
Prosecutors filed six charges against Hogg, spanning from January 2017 to July 2024 with one against Jilly between April 2023 and August this year.
Hogg pled guilty at Selkirk Sheriff Court, in the Borders, to one single charge of abusing Gillian between 2019 and 2024. He admitted shouting and swearing at his wife in an aggressive manner, and would accuse her of “not being fun” for staying upstairs with their children.
He bombarded her with more than 200 messages over the course of a couple of hours as well as monitoring her movements through a phone app after they had split up in 2023 and, at one point, caused her to have a panic attack.
Hogg declined to comment.
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