Alexander Millington-Cotes has launched a £55,000 crowdfunder to help Sir Ranulph Fiennes found through specialist legal advice. He says the money is for “locate and safeguard” work tied to the explorer’s care.
The fundraiser had raised almost £3,000 by Saturday afternoon. Millington-Cotes says the donations would cover specialist legal representation and advice, court fees and the cost of determining Fiennes’ exact location.
Millington-Cotes and Louise
Millington-Cotes, Fiennes’ stepson, said the aim is to revoke Louise’s lasting power of attorney. He also said his mother told him two years ago that he was unwelcome at the family home.
He described a long pattern of restricted access. “His isolation would consist of being effectively annexed in the other end of the house, with relatively minimal contact,” he said. He also recalled, “I remember him gleaming the occasional times I would appear unannounced with some sweet treats, which I’d had to haul with me as I climbed over the seven-foot industrial entrance gate.”
Royal Geographical Society in Kensington
Fiennes is 82 and has Parkinson’s disease. He has not been seen in public for more than two years, since failing to appear at a gala evening organised in his honour at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington, west London. At that time, he delivered a brief prerecorded message from home saying he was “not well enough” to attend in person.
Since then, a cousin secretly visited him in a care home last year, and Arabella McIntyre-Brown said she “checked into the London home for a week in an attempt to speak to him.” She said Fiennes “expressed a wish to see his friends.”
Where Sir Ranulph Fiennes
The crowdfunder is intended to pay for “specialist legal representation and advice” and for “determining [Fiennes’] exact location, to be shared with the relevant authorities.” Millington-Cotes said the donations are aimed at care arrangements he believes are stopping proper contact with Fiennes.
The next step is for the money to be used for legal advice, court fees and efforts to establish where he is living. The case now turns on whether that legal route can alter the care arrangement and reopen access to him.
