Father Dion Correia is planning a trip of a lifetime to tell the teenage daughter he hasn’t seen for eight years how much he loves her. Mr Correia says he wants to make up for lost time with 18-year-old daughter Rien as he’s missed out on her growing up “from a child to a beautiful young lady”. He hopes to head to the US next month to spend Thanksgiving with Rien after a relative helped to reunite the father and daughter.Mr Correia was sent a heartfelt letter from Rien about how she had been thrown out of home by her mother, Mr Correia’s first wife.It comes less than a year after The Royal Gazette reported how Mr Correia’s first wife had kept his two daughters from him since 2003.In the letter, Rien said she “couldn’t take” the stormy relationship with her mother any more.She wrote the letter “to whom it may concern” because she was worried about her 15-year-old sister Mr Correia’s other daughter Brooke and two step-siblings, aged six and two.Rien wrote: “My Mom has been telling me for many years that my real Dad, Dion Correia, didn’t want to see me or my sister Brooke.“My cousin found an article in the Bermuda newspaper, which is where my Dad lives, that he has been searching for me for years and has been paying for child support for me and Brooke.”Mr Correia said he was looking forward to spending quality time with Rien but his heart goes out to Brooke, who still lives at home with her mother.He said being apart from his daughters had been “the hardest thing in the world” as they “mean the world to me”.Mr Correia, who is a graphic designer, said: “I am so excited. I know it’s been a long time and there are lots of issues, but I can’t wait to see her.“We have so much catching up to do. I just want her to know how I feel about her. I want her to hear it from me.“But this isn’t about me or her, this is about us, together again, after so long.“My daughters were plucked out of my life, then I had to read a letter like that from Rien. I was so upset. It was a real eye-opener.”He added: “Rien’s doing great now, she’s so grown up, she’s now in college, things are definitely better than the way they were.”Rien wrote the letter, which The Royal Gazette has seen, in July stating that she was ejected from her home just before her 18th birthday “with nowhere to go, none of my clothes and only a Bible that my mother gave me”.She stated that from the age of six she had been forced to care for Brooke while her mom worked the night shift as a nurse. She wrote: “I would have to feed Brooke, bath her, help her with her school work and get her ready for school and at the same time make sure my work was done and the house was clean.”Rien went on to explain that her mother became extremely upset if her instructions were not followed.The teenager explained her self-esteem was at an all-time low as she was constantly told “she’d never become anything”.She wrote: “My biggest fear now is who will protect my siblings … please help me to stop this happening and keep my brother and sisters safe.”Rien is now attending college in Arizona even though she claims her mother tried to cancel her full scholarship. She says that she was thrown out of home when she asked for money to help with her studies.She lives with her aunt, who forwarded her letter on to Mr Correia and put him in touch with his eldest daughter. Father and daughter now regularly e-mail, text and talk on the phone.It was only when Mr Correia made friends with Rien on Facebook that he learned both his daughters had visited Bermuda on vacation last year. He spotted a family photo of them in St George’s, but he had had no idea they had been “within arm’s reach”.Mr Correia said: “Their mother had put a wedge between us … They were told I didn’t love them and didn’t care.“I’m their father but I have purposely been kept out of their lives. I wanted to be a father to them more than anything.“It’s been an ongoing battle. I was paying child support but was denied the right to be a father.”Mr Correia lived in California with his ex-wife, who is Bermudian with American citizenship, but returned to Bermuda when they split up in 1997.He said he was still “angry and frustrated with the system” as he had “always tried to do the right thing”. Mr Correia said the California courts had tried to paint him as “a deadbeat dad” and he was given limited visitation rights and ordered to pay monthly child support payments, while his wife got sole custody.Mr Correia last saw his daughters when he paid for them to come to Bermuda for a month’s vacation in 2003. Since then he has not had any contact as he did not know where they were living.He insists he has always wanted to be in his children’s lives, although the distance and the relationship with his ex-wife had not made that possible.Childwatch co-founder Eddie Tavares said Mr Correia’s story was an example of how the legal system should make “better judgments” when fathers wanted to take an active role.He said: “The mother has been using her daughters for her own benefit to get back at the father.“The father has done everything by the book but he’s been prevented from staying in touch.“This unfortunately happens so often. Men are being labelled as absent fathers who don’t care when it’s just not the truth”.Mr Tavares said Childwatch would continue to educate Bermuda about the “alarming situations” of ‘parental alienation’. He is calling on courts to listen to fathers as he fears children who believe they are unloved could end up hurting themselves or others.Useful website: www.childwatch.bm.