For the woman who has sat at Barry George’s side in court and prison cells, yesterday’s verdict was both a professional and personal victory.

Susan Young is the clinical psychologist credited with carefully guiding the vulnerable and mentally unwell defendant through the rigours of his legal battle.

In what has been the most challenging case of her career, Dr Young got to know better than most the man at the centre of one of Britain’s most notorious murders and miscarriages of justice.

In her first newspaper interview, she says that she initially struggled to communicate with him before gaining his trust and eventually becoming his confidante.

“When I first met him I was a little bit apprehensive. I was worried because of all the press coverage that there had been about him.”

As she took a seat in 2001 opposite Mr George as a prison guard looked on in one of the prison cells below the Old Bailey, she was confronted by a deeply anxious man. “He was highly distressed because he had seen the media coverage about him. It was very difficult to engage with him. But it was successful for me because I could see how his functions deteriorated when he was upset or under intense pressure. “He was distant and simply couldn’t concentrate. Simple sentences had to be repeated to make him understand. He was very suspicious of talking to me at first.”

She said he was in the lowest percentile of the population for memory, he had low IQ and he suffered complex psychiatric and psychological problems.

In preparing her report, she wrote that he would need constant support during any subsequent trial. That job was eventually assigned to her because, among other things, she had built up such a rapport with him.

Attempts to obtain his medical history were thwarted when his files went missing. But, when they emerged – halfway through the first trial – they showed Mr George had suffered epileptic fits from the age of 2.

The decision to assign Dr Young, 50, to Mr George was controversial: the taxpayer was paying tens of thousands of pounds to secure the mental stability of a man who was a known criminal.

But Dr Young believes that because Mr George was on the “borderline” of being mentally well enough to stand trial, her intervention helped to allow the cogs of justice to turn.

“I have spent hours and hours with Barry George. He’s always maintained his innocence. He has never said anything that has made me think otherwise. I would seriously doubt that someone with his level of problems could carry out the murder. And I would expect someone who has his problems to let something slip, but he never has.”

Asked if she has ever seen any signs of the violent rages that the prosecution said he could exhibit, she shrugged and said: “Never. He’s never frightened me and I have never been concerned. He’s been extremely courteous and he’s never overstepped the boundaries.”

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