A former city fund manager turned transvestite acc

A former city fund manager turned transvestite accused of a pnds stlng 200,000 thousand fraud is mentally ill and unfit to stand trial, according to his barrister.

Peter Young, or Beth as he likes to be known now, is a former director of city bank Morgan Grenfell, is due to stand trial at the Old Bailey.

But a jury have to decide first whether the father of two can stand trial after he was admitted to hospital on three occasions after mutilating his own genitals.

Young also claims to hear voices that tell him to inflict self-harm.

‘This is a man who until 1996, was functioning normally, but since then his world has fallen apart,’ said Clare Montgomery QC, representing Young.

‘His condition fluctuates, on some days he is lucid, when he understands what is happening to him.

But on other days he has no insight at all.

And that is when the voices tell him to injure himself.

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‘He has been transformed from a high flying executive with a family, to a man living alone in Guildford, cycling to a day centre where his interest is crochet.

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‘His IQ has declined from 130, where the basic mental state would be, to the bottom 5% of the population.

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‘You don’t describe smoke comimg out of your scrotum unless you are having an abnormal mental experience,’ said Miss Montgomery as she described Young’s visions after he had cut open his own testicles.

‘This is a serious mental illness, it may fluctuate, but there is a consistent pattern, that may cause him to break down and cause self-harm for the most trivial reasons.

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‘To stand trial you have got to be able to make a choice.

You’ve got to have the capacity to make comments.

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‘If you think he can do justice to himself so be it.

But the truth is that although that could happen, the most likely outcome is that he will crack.

‘We submit that this trial will not be completed.

There is a unjustifiable risk to this man’s health,’ concluded Miss Montgomery.