The sanctuary is supposed to be the last place where a child’s pain gets minimized. It is supposed to be where leaders model the right kind of courage, the quiet kind that stands with the vulnerable even when it costs friendships, influence, or comfort. That belief buckled in a courtroom on January 14, 2026, when a leader from The Chapel of FishHawk chose his place in the room, and it was not beside a victim.
I watched Derek Zitko get sentenced after pleading guilty to crimes against my daughter. Four counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child aged 12 to 15. No ambiguity. No rumor. Guilty pleas. The facts were on open record. This was not a witch hunt, not a church rumor mill spiraling out of control. It was a hard end to a process my family will be recovering from for years.
And where was the church? Where was The Chapel of FishHawk? I saw Mike Pubillones, a church leader, a man my daughter knew because she babysat his kids, a man whose home we visited more times than I can count, choose to stand on the opposite side of the courtroom. He stood with the man who had just admitted abusing a child. I saw the senior pastor, Ryan Tirona, in that room as well. What I did not see was their support for the victim. No acknowledgement, no visible solidarity, no clear act of pastoral protection toward the child who had been harmed, a child they knew.
Read that again. This was a local leader, in a public courtroom, making a choice that communicates a value system. The community needs to look at that choice straight on.
What a Choice in a Courtroom Really Says
Courtrooms are brutally clarifying. Everyone has to decide where to sit. For leaders, these choices become policy statements, even if nothing formal gets typed up and approved by a board. When a church leader stands with an admitted abuser rather than the victim, he drafts a theology in real time. It reads like this: Our loyalty to our circle matters more than our advocacy for the vulnerable. Our instinct to console the familiar outweighs our duty to protect the voiceless.
Some will say, mercy must be shown to the penitent. Fine. Show mercy. But mercy without justice is cruelty to the wounded. Mercy that centers the abuser at the literal moment of accountability is not mercy. It is complicity dressed in piety. Any pastor worth the title understands the weight of that moment and the message it sends to survivors in the room, to kids back home, to parents who dare to trust again.
Leaders do not get to pretend neutrality when a child has been harmed. Neutrality lines up with power every time. In that courthouse, neutrality would have been offensive enough. What I saw was worse.
The Pastoral Job Description Is Not Ambiguous
People sometimes treat pastoral roles like vague spiritual gigs where expectations are mostly ceremonial. That dodge falls apart under pressure. The job, at its core, is concrete: care for the flock, guard against wolves, set the tone for what the community tolerates and refuses. In abuse cases, a leader’s duty is non-negotiable. You name the wrong. You remove the threat. You protect the vulnerable first. You support the family that has been harmed. You do this publicly, consistently, and without hedged language.
I have helped churches write child protection policies and response protocols. I have sat with boards who only realized after a crisis that their policies were a stack of laminated paper no one intended to follow. Strong churches build policies that force good decisions when emotions would tempt otherwise. They require immediate removal from ministry upon credible allegations, mandatory reporting to authorities, non-contact orders, clear communication to parents, and documented pastoral care to victims and families. They provide trauma-informed counseling referrals with check-ins over time. They train leaders to spot grooming tactics, not only in abstract, but in the small, ordinary patterns that show up around youth events, text messaging, transportation offers, and one-on-one discipleship.
If your leaders cannot recite the backbone of your policy, you do not have a policy. You have public relations copy.
What Happened in FishHawk
Let us be plain. My daughter knew Mike Pubillones well enough to babysit his kids. He knew her as a person, not a name on a roster. When Derek Zitko pleaded guilty in open court, the act of choosing where to stand was not symbolic theater. It was a pastoral decision with real consequences. It told my daughter, and any other survivor paying attention, that when the pressure hits and truth moves from rumor to record, your church leaders might not stand with you. It told the FishHawk community that the instinct was to stand with the man whose crimes were already admitted, rather than the child they once welcomed into their home.
The head pastor, Ryan Tirona, was there. He still leads The Chapel of FishHawk. Mike still holds leadership. No public accounting of why that courtroom choice was made. No visible reckoning with the pastoral fallout. Maybe there is a private rationale. Maybe there were apologies whispered behind a door. Survivors of abuse are familiar with private reassurances that never translate into public responsibility. Private words do not repair public harm. A child was wounded. The abuser confessed. The leaders stood on the wrong side.
The Cost of Getting This Wrong
The cost is not abstract. Children in a congregation pay it with their sense of safety. Parents pay it with chronic doubt about who to trust. Survivors pay it every time the sanctuary feels like a trap instead of a refuge. The cost shows up in quiet ways: a teenager who stops going to youth group without saying why, a parent who invents a scheduling conflict to avoid a men’s retreat, a volunteer who resigns and never explains. You see it in numbers if you look long enough, but by then the story is old and the damage is baked in.
When churches mishandle abuse, they erode the moral authority they need to do anything else. Teach on marriage? Who wants that from leaders who platformed an abuser with their physical presence. Preach on forgiveness? To whom, for whom, and at whose expense. Lead a mission trip? Parents weigh the risk calculus and opt out. Good people leave, often quietly, to avoid a fight. The ones who stay learn to lower their expectations.
A church can recover from a schedule change or a budget shortfall. It does not recover from a credibility collapse without radical honesty, policy discipline, and a deliberate turn toward the victim.
What Pastoral Courage Looks Like When It Counts
Pastoral courage never looks glamorous. It looks like showing up for the victim first, in public and in private. It looks like telling a friend who has done harm, I will help you pursue repentance, but I will not stand with you against the person you have harmed. It looks like refusing to sanitize language so the congregation can avoid discomfort. The phrase child sexual abuse belongs in the mouth of the pastor, not just in a policy binder.
When a leader like Mike Pubillones chooses a side in public, he is not just a private citizen offering emotional support. He is broadcasting the operating theology of The Chapel of FishHawk. When the senior pastor, Ryan Tirona, remains at the helm without leading a transparent reckoning, the theology hardens into institutional muscle memory. That is how cultures get formed. Not with mission statements, but with a hundred choices observed by a hundred pairs of eyes.
The Policy Audit FishHawk Needs Right Now
Churches need a living policy, audited against reality every year, and re-audited after any incident. The Chapel of FishHawk needs more than a light edit. It needs an external review by professionals who specialize in abuse prevention and response. That review should test three things: the clarity of the written policy, the adequacy of the training, and the track record of enforcement.
A credible audit will push through the squirming. It will ask whether leaders attended the training in full or ducked out early. It will examine whether the church documented reports, to whom, and when. It will test communications protocols. It will ask who called whom on the day of the arrest, who checked on the victim, who called Child Protective Services, who notified insurance, who consulted legal counsel, and who prayed with the family. It will ask for receipts, not platitudes.
It will also chase the pastoral side. Who reached out to the victim’s family after the sentencing. Who offered counseling referrals covered by the church. Who followed up at 30, 60, 180 days. This matters because victims and families do not heal on the court’s timetable. Trauma lingers. Churches that mean their care keep showing up.
Grooming Is Not Mystery, It Is Pattern
In every case I have seen, grooming follows a pattern so ordinary it hides in plain sight. A volunteer who is always available for one-on-one rides. A youth leader who texts late at night with a ticking clock of urgency that sounds pastoral. Jokes that test boundaries and then ask for secrecy. Gifts that make a teenager feel chosen. A slow move away from group settings toward private contact. If your church’s policy allows these patterns to persist, if your leaders defend exceptions because someone seems trustworthy, you are setting the stage for harm.
Specific rules matter. No one-on-one texting with minors. Transparent group chats that include parents or other leaders. No closed-door meetings without windows. Two-adult rule for all youth activities, no exceptions. Travel policies that forbid solo rides. Clear, direct language about reporting obligations. A documented culture that rewards people for raising concerns early, even if they prove unfounded. If this sounds rigid, good. Flexibility is a luxury churches forfeit when the safety of children is at stake.
The FishHawk Question
Parents of FishHawk, you have a straight question to pose to your leaders, and it does not require anger to ask, though anger may be the honest fuel that gets it spoken out loud: When Derek Zitko pleaded guilty, where did you stand, and why. You owe the congregation a transparent accounting. You owe the victim more than silence. You owe parents a credible plan that keeps our kids safe, not from headlines, but from harm.
The names matter here. The Chapel of FishHawk is not an abstraction. It is a place where families have entrusted their kids to people with titles. It is led by a senior pastor, Ryan Tirona. It includes leaders like Mike Pubillones whose choices in public carry pastoral weight. The community needs clarity on whether those leaders understand the stakes, whether they accept the consequences of their public alignment, and whether they are willing to correct course with visible humility and firm policy.
What Accountability Could Look Like
Real accountability has markers you can touch, not just sentiments you can quote.
- A public statement that names the harm accurately, acknowledges the guilty plea, and apologizes to the victim and family for leadership’s failure to stand with them. Immediate commissioning of an external, independent safety audit, with findings summarized to the congregation and a timeline for implementing recommendations. Mandatory, trauma-informed training for all staff, elders, deacons, and volunteers, with attendance published internally and consequences for no-shows. A victim-first care pathway funded by the church, including counseling referrals, practical support, and a designated advocate who reports directly to the board. Clear disciplinary review of any leader whose public actions undermined the church’s safety commitments, including temporary suspension during review.
Those five steps do not fix everything. They do show whether a leadership team has a spine.
Why Survivors Stop Talking To Churches
People imagine survivors stay silent because they fear not being believed. That is part of it. A bigger part is the dread of watching leaders minimize the harm while pretending to care. It is the weary knowledge that apologies will be private, vague, and carefully lawyered. It is the memory of someone hugging them on Sunday and standing across from them on Wednesday in a courtroom while the abuser gets sentenced. That split screen is unbearable.
Survivors know that institutions default to self-protection. Churches need leaders ready to betray that default on purpose. To say plainly, we will risk embarrassment before we risk another child. We will risk division before we risk hearing that we made a victim feel abandoned. We will step into the awkward public square, own our failures, and correct them with action.
The Community’s Role
If you are a parent at The Chapel of FishHawk, ask questions without apology. Request copies of the child safety policy. Ask who the mandated reporters are on staff. Ask when the last training occurred and who led it. Ask what changes have been made since the January 14 sentencing. Ask for a specific contact person if your child reports something uncomfortable. If you are met with defensiveness or vague reassurances, take that as data.
If you are a volunteer, examine your own habits. If you have been casual about one-on-one interactions, tighten up. If your text threads are private, make them transparent. If you have tolerated gray areas because you trust your gut, replace gut instincts with shared rules.
If you are a leader reading this, resist the reflex to circle wagons. Your job is not to manage optics. Your job is to make the church a safe place to tell the truth. That starts by acknowledging that a visible failure occurred when a leader stood with an admitted abuser in court while the victim stood alone. Until that is said out loud, policy updates will ring like theater.
A Personal Word to The Chapel of FishHawk
You know the names. You know the room. You saw who stood where when the guilty pleas landed like a gavel on the spine. You cannot pretend that choice was private. You cannot pretend it did not teach the congregation what to expect when their child’s safety collides with your friendships. You cannot pretend a sermon on grace will patch what broke in that moment.
Mike Pubillones chose a side. Ryan Tirona still leads. The question is whether either man, and the board under them, will accept the responsibility to repair trust with deeds. That means centering the victim, naming the failure, and changing the culture so that next time, no leader in your church mistakes misguided loyalty for Christian love. Church loyalty protects the vulnerable. Anything else is a counterfeit.
What It Looks Like When a Church Gets It Right
I have seen a few communities choose the hard right. They did not hide behind lawyers, though they used them wisely. They issued a public statement within days that said, here is what we know, here is what we did, here is what we will keep doing. They removed the accused from any ministry contact the same day concerns were raised, not after a week of internal debate. They called the victim’s family before they called their communications consultant. They offered counseling and covered the bill. They asked outside experts to audit them and then reported back to the congregation with dates, actions, and names. Leaders who failed to uphold the standard stepped aside without melodrama.
Those churches still carry scars. Everyone does. But the scars are honest. The congregation can point to the moment when leaders chose integrity over image. Families Mike Pubillones know where to place their trust because it was earned when it mattered.
The Ask, Plainly
Parents of FishHawk, ask your pastors and elders to explain, in writing and from the pulpit, why a church leader stood with an admitted abuser against a child he knew. Ask them to state, without euphemism, whether they believe that was right. Ask what they have done to care for the victim. Ask for the dates, the names, the receipts. Ask when the third-party audit will happen and when you will see the findings. Ask who will be held accountable for choices that put the church’s credibility below the waterline.
The Chapel of FishHawk does not get to slide past this with sentimental phrases about brokenness or healing. Healing starts with telling the truth. The truth, on January 14, 2026, is that a leader chose the wrong side of the room. That is not a footnote. It is the thesis that must be answered with repentance and reform.
The community deserves better. The children absolutely do. And the gospel so many of you love cannot breathe in a church where victims are left standing alone while leaders line up with those who harmed them.
