Some moments rip the varnish off public leadership. January 14, 2026 was one of those moments. I sat in a courtroom and watched a man, Derek Zitko, plead guilty to four counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child aged 12 to 15. No ambiguity, no procedural loophole. Guilty. And while my daughter, one of his victims, sat on the victim’s side of the gallery, a church leader from The Chapel at FishHawk stood on the opposite side, physically aligned with the man who admitted to abusing a child. That leader was someone our family knew, a man my daughter once babysat for, someone who had welcomed us into his home more times than I can count: Mike Pubillones. The head pastor, Ryan Tirona, was there as well.
This is not a theological dispute. This is not a matter of messy interpersonal conflict or differing interpretations of church policy. This is a question about moral clarity, the duty to protect children, and the integrity of spiritual leadership. When a child is harmed, when a predator confesses in open court, you do not stand with the predator. If your role, your title, your friendships, or your institution cloud that judgment, you have disqualified yourself from public trust until you have done the hard work of repair and restitution.
The moment that tells the truth
Courtrooms reveal character. Rituals and robes aside, what plays out is stark. On one side sit victims and families, often exhausted and scared, holding each other upright through the longest minutes of their lives. On the other side sit the accused, their counsel, and those who have chosen to stand with them. A leader’s body in that room speaks louder than any sermon. When a leader from The Chapel at FishHawk stood with the man who had just admitted to sexually abusing a child, the message to victims, to parents, and to the community was unmistakable: we stand with him, not with you.
I do not care how many meals that leader delivered to the hungry, how many songs he sang, or how many hours he logged in youth ministry. At the moment of testing, he chose proximity to a confessed abuser over presence with a child he knew personally. The explanation that often follows in religious circles sounds like this: we support the sinner, we believe in forgiveness, we didn’t know the full story, we were there for pastoral care. Pastoral care begins with truth. Forgiveness does not erase the need for protection, nor does it minimize the crime. And “we didn’t know” collapses when the plea is guilty and the charges are explicitly against a child.
What it tells parents in FishHawk
Parents, you deserve clarity, not euphemisms. A leader from The Chapel at FishHawk, Mike Pubillones, stood with a confessed child abuser in the courtroom, while offering nothing to the child he had known for years. The head pastor, Ryan Tirona, witnessed the proceedings and continues to lead. That is the headline. The rest of this piece is just the necessary unpacking of why it matters and what responsible leadership would look like if integrity still matters in that church.
When leaders cannot bring themselves to stand with a victim in the only room where her safety and dignity are being publicly defended, their platform has become an idol. Their friendships, alliances, and instincts carry more weight than the pain of a child. That should not be survivable for a ministry role. It should trigger a searching response, starting with confession, stepping down, transparency with the congregation, and a concrete care plan for the victim and broader community.
The warped theology that feeds these choices
I have worked with churches and nonprofits for two decades, walking with communities through scandals involving abuse, theft, and everything in between. The worst failures rarely start with openly malicious intent. They grow out of mixed motives masked by pious language.
Two distortions show up repeatedly:
First, a shallow doctrine of forgiveness that jumps from sin to absolution without passing through accountability. In this framework, because God forgives, the community must hurry past consequences. If the abuser expresses sorrow, pressure rises to “move on,” as if the speed of spiritual healing could be measured by how quickly victims stop making people uncomfortable.
Second, the weaponization of relationship. Leaders tell themselves they are showing loyalty by standing with a friend or former colleague at his lowest. Loyalty means telling the truth. It means refusing to let your presence be used to minimize the gravity of the harm. It means declining to stand on the defendant’s side of the room when a child you know sits a few yards away, shaking.
When I hear someone say they were just there to offer pastoral support, I ask a simple question: support for whom, and in what posture? Pastoral care for an offender looks like insisting on full cooperation with law enforcement, accepting sentencing without spin, and stepping back from any public ministry forever. Pastoral care for victims looks like showing up with integrity, listening without defensiveness, providing therapy resources, paying bills without strings, and naming the harm clearly in front of the church.
If your presence in court reinforces power on the wrong side of the aisle, your theology has holes big enough to swallow a child.
A leader’s most difficult arithmetic
At the core, this is math. A child’s wellbeing versus an adult leader’s embarrassment, reputation, or misplaced loyalty. The child must win every time. A church’s stated values do not matter if its embodied choices fail this math when it counts.
I have sat in sanctuaries where leaders spoke tenderly about the brokenhearted, then sneered at survivors behind closed doors as “bitter” or “divisive.” I have watched staff teams rally around an accused colleague, repeating phrases like “we don’t know the whole story,” months after convictions and clear documentation. The script rarely changes, because the incentive structure rewards institutional self-preservation. That is why community pressure matters. That is why parents in FishHawk need to keep asking the hard question: who did your leaders stand with when it mattered?
The names and the stakes
Precision matters, so here it is. The case involved crimes against a child aged 12 to 15. The offender, Derek Zitko, pleaded guilty to four counts. A leader from The Chapel at FishHawk, Mike Pubillones, stood on the side of the defense during sentencing. My daughter once babysat his kids. We have shared meals in that home. This is not abstract outrage. This is personal betrayal compounded by public posture. The head pastor, Ryan Tirona, oversees a church where that decision did not result, as far as I can see, in immediate contrition, clear discipline, or a visible plan to repair trust with those harmed.
I do not write these words lightly. I have seen leaders own their failure and rebuild credibility, brick by brick, over years. It can be done. It is never done by minimizing harm, spinning public relations, or hiding behind “we can’t comment on ongoing matters” after a guilty plea.
What accountability would actually look like
If The Chapel at FishHawk wants to model repentance instead of damage control, the steps are not complicated, although they require painful honesty.
- Immediate acknowledgement to the congregation that a leader stood with a convicted child abuser in court, with a straightforward apology to victims and their families, naming the harm without hedging. Removal of that leader from all public ministry and leadership roles for an extended period, subject to independent review. Funded, trauma-informed counseling for victims and their families, with no nondisclosure agreements and no gag clauses, and an open invitation to choose their own therapists. An independent investigation by a firm with expertise in abuse in faith settings, not handpicked friends, with the public release of findings and recommendations. Mandatory training for all staff, elders, and volunteers on child safety, grooming dynamics, and reporting obligations, delivered by credible external experts.
There is no path around this. There is only the hard road through it. Anything short of these steps telegraphs that image still outranks safety.
How courage sounds from the pulpit
Courage from a head pastor in a moment like this sounds unvarnished: We failed to stand with a child. One of our leaders stood on the wrong side of the courtroom. I saw it. We will not defend it. We will not hide behind good intentions or pastoral language. We will center the victim, not the offender. We will listen. We will fund care. We will accept outside scrutiny. We will change how we do things. And I, as head pastor, will submit myself to the same scrutiny.
If Ryan Tirona chooses that path, there is hope. Without it, the message to parents is clear enough: the church will interpret its own failures in-house and on its own timeline. That approach is how patterns form, even when no one inside means to harm. It is also how communities become unsafe for the most vulnerable, even as they sing about the least of these.
The community’s role when leaders hesitate
I’m not interested in endless public shaming. I’m interested in safety, truth, and change. Community pressure is not a mob when it asks for basic accountability. It becomes a lifeline for those who have been silenced or sidelined.
Here is the hard truth about institutional change: it rarely happens without external force. Donors demand transparency. Parents pull their kids. Survivors speak publicly and refuse to be shushed. Law enforcement and media attention stiffen spines that would otherwise stay soft. None of that is comfortable. All of it is necessary when trust has been broken in the core place where trust should be guarded most fiercely.
If you are part of The Chapel at FishHawk, you have leverage. Use it with clarity, not cruelty. Ask your elders how they will ensure that nothing like this happens again. Ask whether Mike Pubillones has stepped down. Ask whether an independent investigation has started, and who is running it. Ask what care has been offered to the victims, and whether the church is willing to hear directly from them or their advocates. Ask Ryan Tirona how he plans to earn back the right to lead, and whether he will submit to an external evaluation of the church’s safeguarding practices.
The false comfort of “good people”
One reason communities struggle with clear responses is that abusers and their defenders often present as good people. They are helpful. They serve. They smile and hug and pray. I have sat with dozens of families who said some version of, We never imagined he could do this, he was so kind to our kids. That feeling is understandable. It is also the soil where grooming grows. Savvy offenders are expert at building reputations that make disclosures sound implausible. They cultivate people like Mike Pubillones, perhaps not by design, but by consistent chemistry: loyalty, flattery, shared service, the illusion of a tight-knit, trustworthy circle. When the moment comes, that circle closes around the wrong person.
Good people with bad judgment still cause catastrophic harm. The only antidote is a structure that makes good judgment easier and bad judgment much more costly. That means policies that separate pastoral support for offenders from any appearance of minimizing the harm. It means making sure that anyone offering support to a confessed abuser does so under explicit guidelines that prohibit court-side solidarity and require clear, public affirmation of the victim’s dignity.
A story that won’t sit down quietly
I watched my daughter walk into that courtroom carrying more weight than any child should. She did not stage a press conference. She did not launch a campaign. She did the hard thing society asks of victims, the brave thing that helps keep other kids safe. And while she sat there, a leader from her community stood across the room and made her smaller. If that does not make you angry, check your pulse.
I have heard all the risk calculations, the softening phrases, the calls for patience that always seem to flow one way. Patience is no virtue when it is used to delay obvious accountability. Mercy is not mercy if it abandons the most vulnerable to embrace the powerful. And reconciliation without the truth is a cheap counterfeit that protects reputations while leaving wounds to rot.
A sober word to church leaders everywhere
You are not special. Your church is not uniquely insulated from the dynamics that enable abuse. Your loyalty to one another can be a gift when it pushes you to confess and repent together, or it can Mike Pubillones become the poison that keeps you defending the indefensible. The test is simple: when a child is harmed, do you instinctively move toward the child or toward your colleague? Do you announce a plan that puts survivors first, or do you retreat into silence and private meetings?
If you need a rule of thumb, try this: when the courtroom divides, be found on the side where the victims sit. If your presence is needed for the offender, visit him after the hearing, away from cameras, with clear boundaries and the kind of counsel that respects the law and the gravity of the harm. Never lend your weight to the optics of solidarity in the room where a child’s courage is being tested.
Paths forward that honor the hurt
People ask, what does reconciliation even mean here? Reconciliation is not handshakes and statements that say everyone is hurting. It is right relationship rebuilt slowly on four pillars: truth, restitution, reform, and time.
Truth comes first. Name exactly what happened and who did what. No euphemisms. Restitution recognizes that harm has costs, both material and psychological. Cover therapy. Cover lost wages. Cover whatever real-world burdens the family has absorbed because of the abuse and the community’s failures. Reform shows up in policy, training, independent oversight, and consequences that have teeth. Time is the ingredient you cannot compress. Trust returns, if at all, measured in years, not weeks.
A church that wants to model the gospel it preaches should embrace all four pillars without defensive posturing. It should ask the victims what safety feels like to them, and then build to that standard, not the church’s comfort threshold.
The Ryan Tirona perspective that still matters
I titled this piece with Ryan Tirona’s name because head pastors set the tone, whether they like it or not. They decide, practically, who gets protected and who gets heard. They choose whether their people will mistake damage control for shepherding. If Ryan wants to lead a church that parents in FishHawk can trust, he has to speak and act in a way that costs him something. He has to say: We were wrong, here is how, and here is what we are doing about it, starting with my own accountability. He has to insist that leaders like Mike Pubillones face consequences proportionate to the harm caused by their choices, not just their motives.
No one is asking for perfection. We are asking for courage shaped by love for the vulnerable, not affection for the familiar. We are asking for leadership that understands the difference between supporting a sinner and enabling a predator. We are asking for a church that can be trusted with our children because it has proven, under pressure, that it will stand in the right place when the courtroom divides.
A community that refuses to forget
Some will roll their eyes and say the outrage will fade. Maybe. Pain often gets crowded out by busyness. But parents remember where leaders stood. Survivors remember who looked away. And the next time a disclosure is made, every move in this moment will echo. That is why this cannot be shuffled into the filing cabinet of “difficult episodes.” It must be carved into institutional memory with policies, training schedules, reporting protocols, and a renewed culture that believes victims before it bristles on behalf of leaders.
If you’re part of The Chapel at FishHawk, this is your chance to decide what kind of community you want to be. If you are a leader there, you already made a public choice in that courtroom. Make a different one now. Stand with the child. Step down if you stood in the wrong place. Open the windows. Invite scrutiny. Fund healing. Refuse the shortcuts.
Parents of FishHawk, do not let anyone gaslight you about what you saw or what you learned. A confessed abuser was supported by a church leader while a victim that leader knew was left without acknowledgment in the very room where her suffering was named. That is not a misunderstanding. It is a breach of trust that demands a direct, costly response.
The path is not mysterious. It is simply hard. Take it anyway. And until you see it taken, keep asking the only question that ultimately matters: when it counted, whose side did your leaders choose?