Stepson Seeks Funds for Legal Advice to Locate Explorer Fiennes

Alexander Millington-Cotes, the stepson of explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, has launched a crowdfunder to pay for specialist legal advice intended to locate and safeguard the 82-year-old, according to The Guardian. Millington-Cotes, 31, set a target of £55,000. He said the money would fund legal representation, court fees and efforts to determine Fiennes’s exact location for sharing with relevant authorities.

The fundraiser had collected almost £3,000 by Saturday afternoon, the report said. Millington-Cotes wants his mother, Louise, to have her lasting power of attorney in relation to Fiennes’s care revoked. He is estranged from her.

Friends and family have expressed concern about Fiennes, who has Parkinson’s disease and has not been seen in public for more than two years. The Guardian reported that Louise, Fiennes’s second wife, had placed him in several care homes where visitors were allegedly restricted. The report also referred to a watchdog’s conclusion that his time in a care home in Wales amounted to a deprivation of liberty because adequate legal safeguards had not been put in place.

These claims were attributed to the newspaper’s reporting and were not independently established in the supplied material. Fiennes failed to attend a gala held in his honour at London’s Royal Geographical Society about two years ago. Instead, he sent a prerecorded message saying he was not well enough to attend.

He has not appeared publicly since, according to the report. Arabella McIntyre-Brown, the sister of Fiennes’s late first wife, told The Guardian she had checked into a London care home for a week because she was worried about him. She said he expressed a wish to see friends.

Millington-Cotes said he had tried several ways to locate his stepfather and had visited care homes without success. He said any surplus fundraising would go to Marie Curie and the British Heart Foundation, charities favoured by Fiennes.