Yes, he is still very bitter about what happened and, as you say, we only hear his side of things. His ex-wife might paint a totally different picture.
Sorry to get personal grahamg, but whatever subject we discuss on here, you always manage to bring up the custody battle you had.
It wasn't a custody battle, it was an access to one's child dispute that you're forming a strident opinion upon, and don't think I haven't heard the "we've only heard one side of the argument" position before, but where are the "two(/three) sides, if I'm going to state my ex. was the superior parent, loved our daughter as much as I did, " if not more", and I felt fortunate to have the cooperation I did for ten years over contact with my daughter?
Find me someone who thinks there is another side to those statements, and I assure you, difficult as it was to deal with my ex., (my legal team thinking she was exceptionally difficult, and when our child was born the hospital staff put my wife in a large room on her own no less, so awkward did they find her!).
However, "greatness has come from our unequal union and marriage in the form of our very successful and popular child", and all you can do in criticising me, or feeling there must be more criticism to come, is suggest I shouldn't have done as I did so far as being a father, reinforcing the view I/we don't know what we're doingdoing as fathers, (I'm telling you btw my daughter says "I ruined the first twelve years of her life, don't let him ruin the next twelve", but do you think a child so badly treated as she claimed would pass every milestone with flying colours, and up to twelve years of age I'd be told, " I hate you", followed by "Keep coming daddy"!?).
In a sense telling a parent they shouldn't have done or decided for themselves what they should have done, (or ex's do this), is deny a close interpersonal and loving relationship between a father and their child, ("gatekeeper behaviour" professionals choose to call it).
No one tells you what you should say or do so far as your husband/partner is concerned, "it is ridiculous to suggest such a thing", (again where there's no abuse, and none was alleged by either side relating to my child), and yet tearing into a parent, especially a dad is fair game, so no I'm not listening, whether I have "issues" or not!
One notable fathers rights campaigner in the UK probably did have what you'd call "issues" when denied contact with his three daughters, and I'd suggest he'd have gone completely mad had he not campaigned as hard as he did against our family law system. In the end one of his daughters came to live with her dad, aged sixteen, and by then he understood the legal system well enough to phone a judge in London who is available for the purooe and have a court order faxed to him, once the judge had spoken to the daughter, before the police arrived at his door, (his child having had to put her belongings in a bin bag when she left her mothers home. So yes, there are plenty of folks/men/fathers out there with "issues" but don't be kidded were about to accept the family law system isn't skewed/wrong/unworkable, injurious to many children, and treating parents/fathers as I was treated, "with all the advantages I had" means other children don't get all the boost I did when complying with her wishes to "Keep coming daddy" (though I couldn't have done it under current family law).
Oh my gosh, what a beautiful story 
