Accused of one of the most heinous crime sprees in recent U.S. history, Beltway sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad was a failed soldier, a karate expert and a devoted father. The man whom police say gunned down random passers-by as they went about their daily lives was, in some ways, not so different from many of us.

Long before he allegedly brandished a weapon and went on a shooting spree, Muhammad was embroiled in a bitter custody fight with his second wife. At issue were his son and two daughters, whom he had taught karate, football and respect for their elders, according to recent news accounts.

The horror and violence of the shootings cannot be excused. However, the alleged actions of Muhammad and his youthful accomplice John Lee Malvo may be explained in large part by looking at the clues in Muhammad's life and talking to those who knew him best.

One such person is Mohammad's divorce lawyer, John Mills of Tacoma, Wash., who blames Muhammad's hard-fought and hard-lost divorce for the shooting spree. Muhammad's attorney told reporters that the accused sniper may have gone to Maryland in hopes of serving his ex-wife with court papers. His wish: To obtain legal guardianship of his children or, at the very least, the right to see them at all.

According to Mills, Muhammad had been trying to serve his ex-wife for more than a year. The pressure of the divorce, he said, was enough to make him snap. Sadly, same pressures that may have driven Muhammad to kill affect millions of fathers throughout the U.S., and sometimes, the pressure does lead to physical altercations, suicide or other irrational acts, begging the questions: Could the Maryland and Virginia shootings have been prevented? Will this type of crime happen again in the future?

The answer to both questions is yes. Mohammad was like many fathers in America who find themselves confronted with divorce papers, which become a de facto one-way ticket out of their children's lives. Today, fewer than two in ten fathers who divorce will receive legal guardianship of their children, meaning that from the moment Mohammad set foot in the courtroom, he had an automatic strike against him in maintaining a normal parental relationship with his children.

The family courts encourage conflict. This adversarial process automatically places men in a no-win situation where women are presumed to be the best caretakers of their children while men, at best, are viewed as the source of child support checks, and at worst, deadbeats and potentially harmful entities in the lives of their former spouses and children. Worse, our laws do little to protect women from violent perpetrators and instead so-called restraining orders goad offenders who know the law can do little to stop them.

Having worked as a forensic consulting expert for 10 years in divorce and custody cases, I know first-hand the anguish men face. Since the late 1960s, the U.S. has put an emphasis on social programs, and an offshoot of that movement has been the assumption that all women are potential victims and men potential perpetrators.

Although well intentioned, our nation's domestic violence laws are shamefully ineffective. Women can now readily obtain restraining orders by walking into a courtroom and filing accusations without ever presenting more than a handwritten statement as evidence. In doing so, it has allowed thousands of innocent men to be unfairly branded while doing little to stop men who would harm their wives or children.

The court, the lawyers, the lawmakers and the public know that divorce conflict has reached an all-time high, yet we allow it to continue unfettered. We have allowed parents to turn their children into pawns, and we have allowed the courts look the other way when confronted with evidence of violence. The truth that none of us wants to face is that we are all, in some small way, guilty of allowing a system to exist that allegedly caused John Allen Muhammad to snap.

We must protect the safety of victims of domestic violence and their children. By requiring a minimal threshold of evidence, we can do better than a toothless restraining order and take violent offenders off the streets before they re-offend.

We must act to keep the courts focused on the best interests of children and families.

Dean Tong