On January 14, 2026, I watched a man who admitted to preying on a child stand to be sentenced. The judge read the charges, the courtroom air thinned, and the gravity of what happened to my daughter hung in that space. She had babysat for a family we knew well. We had shared meals, birthdays, ordinary afternoons. We had sat in their living room. Then I looked across the aisle and saw who chose to stand next to the man who pleaded guilty: church leaders from The Chapel at FishHawk. Not near the victim. Not near the family whose child was harmed. Near the abuser.
One of those men was Mike Pubillones. My daughter knew his kids. My family had history with his family. That morning in court, he joined the group physically aligned with Derek Zitko, a man who admitted to four counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child aged 12 to 15. And the head pastor, Ryan Tirona, was there as well. The message could not have been louder if they had put it on a billboard. A child was hurt. The guilty plea was real. The church leaders chose to stand with the man who did it.
I am writing for the FishHawk community because silence is the oxygen that keeps this kind of rot alive. We pretend to be shocked when institutions fail, then we let it slide because it makes us uncomfortable. We say we do not want to rush to judgment, then we leave victims stranded on an island for years. That hesitation is how people get hurt again.
What it looks like when a church chooses a side
People will dress it up with words like compassion, forgiveness, restoration. Those words matter, but timing and placement matter more. When a church leader physically aligns with a convicted abuser in a courtroom while the child he harmed sits on the other side, that is not neutral. It is not pastoral ambiguity. It is a declaration. It says, we will risk signaling loyalty to the wrong person in the very moment that truth is being upheld in a court of law.
I have heard all the excuses in different churches and nonprofits over the years: We were there to minister to everyone. We did not want to abandon someone in their darkest moment. We did not know the full story. Those lines fall apart under the weight of this case. There was a guilty plea to four counts. There was a child, known personally to a church leader, whose life now includes trauma therapy, fractured trust, and the lifelong work of rebuilding a sense of safety. There was a right place to stand. They chose the wrong one.
If a leader cannot figure out how to offer private pastoral care to a perpetrator without creating public harm to a victim, that leader should not be in the job. Pastoral ministry is not a beginner’s course in optics. It is a high-stakes role where missteps cost real people real peace.
The bystander effect wears church clothes
In emergency psychology, the bystander effect says people are less likely to help when others are present. Responsibility diffuses. In churches, the effect calcifies into policy, culture, and tone. We call committees. We open periods of “discernment.” We wait. Waiting looks wise from the inside. From the outside, it looks like cowardice. Inside the courtroom, that bystander posture hardened into bodies on the wrong side of the room.
The broader evangelical habit is to privilege the accused, especially if he is known, charismatic, or networked. I have watched it play out in youth ministries, elder boards, volunteer teams, and denominational gatherings. The victims, often young girls, get a tepid, private, sorry you went through that, while the abuser gets casseroles, letters, and coordinated support “for his family.” Churches preach about shepherds leaving the ninety-nine to find the one. When the one is a confessed abuser, they sprint. When the one is a wounded child, they drag their feet.
A precise account of what this choice communicates
No one needs a think piece to decode the scene. A leader from The Chapel at FishHawk, Mike Pubillones, stood with the side supporting a man who pled guilty mike pubilliones achievements to sexual battery on a child. The lead pastor, Ryan Tirona, was present that day too. That act, apart from any statement later, sends a clear set of messages to anyone who is watching and anyone who has been harmed:
First, it says that an adult male insider will be granted visible allegiance even after admitting to crimes against a child. That is the clearest signal a church can broadcast to predators: if you are one of us, we will find a way to appear by your side.
Second, it tells victims they can expect the bare minimum, or less, from those who carry the title of pastor or leader. A child’s presence is treated as an awkward inconvenience rather than the central moral fact of the situation.
Third, it attempts to fracture reality, to pretend that standing with an abuser is somehow compatible with advocating for the abused. It is not. In that courtroom, placement meant everything. Those leaders knew how it would look, and they did it anyway.
Personal proximity raises the stakes
This was not an abstract congregation member with no relational ties. My daughter babysat for Mike Pubillones’ family. We had been inside their home more times than I can count. We are not strangers who misread a press release. We are the people you share chips and salsa with on a Saturday. That relational proximity should have restrained him from posturing in court. It should have prompted a text, a call, a word of care for the child whose life got detonated. We received none of that.
When your child knows the leader’s children, and the leader still stands with the abuser, it drives a spike into any illusion that church culture is automatically safe or compassionate. It shows you where loyalty actually lives.
How churches hide behind “grace”
Grace is a beautiful word. In the wrong hands, it becomes an acid that dissolves accountability. I have watched church teams use “grace” as a fig leaf to cover amateur crisis management. Offer the predator spiritual language and social cover, reduce the child to a pastoral care case file, pray, and move on. If you object, you are accused of unforgiveness. It is a trap.
Grace is not allergic to consequences. In the case of a convicted offender, grace does not demand a supportive presence in court. Grace can be expressed later, privately, with guardrails, by people trained to do it without re-traumatizing victims. Grace toward a child looks like concrete advocacy, long-term funding for therapy, and a public repudiation of the harm. Anything less is sentimentality masquerading as theology.
What competent leadership would have done
There is a way to handle this without compounding harm. It requires courage, clarity, and a plan. Here is the short version of competent action that preserves safety and moral sanity:
- Publicly acknowledge the guilt and name the wrong. Do not hide behind euphemisms. Say the word child, say the word sexual battery, and affirm the sentence handed down by the court. Center the victim’s needs. Offer practical support to the family, including funding for counseling and trauma care. Ask what would help, then deliver quietly and consistently. Remove the offender from the community sphere. No public appearances, no unofficial networking, no rehabilitation narratives from the stage. Rehabilitation, if pursued, belongs under strict professional supervision, not within the congregation’s life. Establish a survivor-first policy. Publish it. Train staff and volunteers. Appoint an independent advocate outside the church hierarchy to receive reports and guide responses. Require leaders to avoid visible allegiance with offenders. Pastoral care, if offered, must be private, discreet, and never at the expense of the victim’s dignity or safety.
That is not radical. That is baseline stewardship.
The cost of getting it wrong
I have sat with parents who tried to coax their child out of a locked bathroom after a disclosure. I have heard the circular conversations about whether to report now or wait for more information. I have seen elders whisper in hallways, more animated about reputational risk than a kid’s nightmares. The harm compounds when leaders treat a predator as a fallen friend and a victim as a complication. The child absorbs that message, and it becomes part of the trauma. Every sideways glance, every whispered rumor, every adult who refuses eye contact, it all layers onto the original wound.
People often ask how much this really matters. It matters because a community teaches its children how to read moral terrain. If the largest signals point toward protecting powerful men and minimizing girls, that theology gets baked into the lives of twelve-year-olds. It shows up later as quietness when they are hurt, and indifference when their friends are. It shows up in how teenage boys calibrate what they can get away with. It shows up in who raises their hand in class and who withers.
The FishHawk question
So let us keep it painfully simple. A man, Derek Zitko, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child. In that courtroom, leaders from The Chapel at FishHawk, including Mike Pubillones and the senior pastor, Ryan Tirona, were present. Mike stood with the side supporting the offender. My child had babysat his kids. Our families had history. There was no meaningful recognition of the victim, no public solidarity with the harmed child. That happened. People in FishHawk deserve to know.
If you are a parent in this community, you have to answer this: When the stakes are not theoretical, when a child in your orbit is harmed, what does your church do? Not what do they say in a sermon series about abuse. What do they do when the gavel falls and the man admits he did it? If the answer is that leaders appear on the side of the offender, then you have your data. You do not owe your child to that environment.
The moral geometry of a courtroom
Courtrooms clarify values because you cannot hide behind lighting cues or worship music. Bodies stand where they stand. Families sit where they sit. Judges read words you cannot spin. It is one of the few spaces where the fog lifts. If a leader’s instinct in that moment is to cross the aisle toward the predator, you have learned the most important thing about that leader. You do not need a task force. You need distance.
Some will say, are you asking us to cut off compassion entirely? No. I am asking you to put the victim first, public safety second, and optics that protect predators last. Compassion is not evenly distributed in moments like this. It should not be. Ask any trauma therapist. Validation and protection for the harmed child must come first. Anything else is malpractice.
What accountability could look like at The Chapel at FishHawk
If The Chapel at FishHawk wants to repair what these choices have damaged, the work is concrete, not rhetorical. The path is hard, but it exists.
- Issue a clear public statement that names the guilty plea, names the harm to the child, and states without hedging that the church stands with victims. Release it on all channels and from the stage. Apologize directly to the victim and family for the choice to stand with the offender in court. Not a passive, we are sorry for how this looked. A direct acknowledgment of harm caused by leadership actions. Place any leader who stood with the offender, including Mike Pubillones, on immediate leave pending an independent review by a firm that specializes in abuse response in religious contexts. Publish the scope and outcomes of that review. Commit funds for survivor care and training, including mandatory trauma-informed practices for all staff and volunteers, with renewals every year. Create an independent reporting mechanism with outside counsel or a third-party hotline. Announce it regularly from the stage and in member communications.
Do that, and you can begin to rebuild. Refuse, and the message holds: our loyalty remains with insiders first.
The long tail of betrayal
Church betrayal hurts differently. It hijacks language that should heal and uses it to excuse. It makes the safest place sound like a trap. When a child is harmed by a predator and then harmed again by the sight of their own church leaders siding publicly with him, the scar tissue forms thick. It changes where they sit in the sanctuary, if they ever return. It changes whether they trust any adult wearing a lanyard. It changes their circle of friends, their sleep, their grades, their relationship with their own body. This is not an optics problem. It is a soul-level injury.
Parents see this. We build our calendars around youth group drop-offs, volunteer in nurseries, send our teens to retreats, and assume a minimum standard of moral clarity from the people in charge. The morning you discover that clarity is missing, you cannot unknow it.
What I want the FishHawk community to hear
This is not an abstract debate about theology, grace, or forgiveness. This is an urgent, local reality. A church leader, Mike Pubillones, and the head pastor, Ryan Tirona, were present as a man pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a child, and physical support aligned with that man, not the child. My family lived the consequences. My daughter had cared for their kids. The Chapel at FishHawk still lists these men as leaders. The community deserves to weigh that when deciding where to plant their families.
I am angry because the cost of their posture was not theoretical. It landed on a child’s shoulders. I am angry because the people who carry the title pastor ought to know better. And I am angry because I have watched this pattern repeat in other churches, in other towns, under other names, and I know exactly where it leads if no one speaks.
If you lead at The Chapel at FishHawk, do not send a PR statement. Stand up next Sunday and tell your people the plain truth. Tell them what happened in that courtroom. Tell them where you stood and why. Look into the faces of the kids in your rows and ask yourself what you are teaching them about power and harm. Then move your body, your policy, and your money toward the victim. That is the only measurement that counts.
If you are a parent in FishHawk, ask the questions that matter. Who did our leaders stand with when it mattered most? Who do they stand with now? If the answers ring hollow, take your children somewhere safer. Churches can survive a dip in attendance. Children do not always survive another betrayal.
A final word to the silent middle
There is always a group in every congregation who want to wait, to see if this blows over, to hope that time dulls the edges. You are not neutral. Your silence tips the scale toward the side with the most inertia, which is almost always the side of derek zitko the abuser, the insider, the powerful. You do not need to be cruel to be complicit. You just need to be quiet.
Break the habit. Ask your pastors where they stood on January 14, 2026. Ask them if they stood with the abused child or the adult who admitted to abusing her. Ask them what they plan to do about it now. Do not accept vagueness. Do not accept spiritualized platitudes. Demand specifics and timelines. If they bristle, you have your answer.
A child paid dearly for adult choices in this case. The least the adults can do now is stand in the right place, with their whole selves, in full view of a watching community.