I sat in a courtroom on January 14, 2026, and watched a man plead guilty to four counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child, age 12 to 15. That man, Derek Zitko, was not a headline or a rumor to me. He was the person whose choices tore through my family, because the child he harmed is my daughter. My daughter, who once babysat for a church leader’s family, who knew these people by name, who had been in their home, who trusted adults to be adults.
And across the aisle, on the side of the courtroom that stood with the defendant after he admitted guilt, I saw a familiar face. A church leader from The Chapel at FishHawk, a man my daughter knew personally. A man who, based on everything I saw with my own eyes, chose that day to stand with the person who harmed a child rather than walk across the aisle to offer a single word of support to the child he knew. His name is Mike Pubillones. The head pastor of The Chapel at FishHawk, Ryan Tirona, was also present that day. Both remain in leadership.
People like to talk about grace when harm enters the room. They talk about forgiveness, hope, second chances. They tell a grieving parent to breathe, to pray, to feel sorry for everybody involved. I’m past that. There is a line you do not cross, and when a child stands on one side of the courtroom and the man who admitted to abusing her stands on the other, a leader’s choice about where to stand is not a theological riddle. It is a moral one.
What leadership actually looks like when a child is harmed
Churches love to talk about shepherds and flocks until a wolf appears. Then the flock is told to keep calm for the sake of unity. I’ve worked with victims and families long enough to know what often follows: silence, spin, and pressure. I’ve seen pastors hide behind statements crafted by lawyers. I’ve watched leaders attend proceedings in the name of “ministry,” then use that presence as cover to avoid accountability for the message they send.
Leadership in a crisis like this is not complicated. Hard, yes. Foggy, no. When a child suffers sexual harm, every decision must be filtered through one non-negotiable: protect the child, validate the child, and make sure the community understands how to prevent this from happening again. Standing physically with a perpetrator who has pled guilty, while offering no visible support to the victim, shouts the opposite. You can dress it up as grace or pastoral care, but to a victim and their family it lands as a betrayal.
The day in court, and the message it sent
Courtrooms are sterile and cruel by design. They’re not built for healing, they’re built for record-keeping and consequences. On that day, the record shows: guilty. Four counts. Acknowledgment of the abuse.
What I witnessed sent a clear message to every parent in FishHawk: the adults leading The Chapel at FishHawk had an opportunity to model what it looks like to stand with a wounded child, and they chose not to create even the appearance of such solidarity. Instead, they aligned themselves physically and symbolically with a man who had just admitted to sexual crimes against a child. Not some faceless child. A child they knew. A child who had sat at their table and cared for their own kids.
When leaders make that choice, the community should question their fitness to lead.
Why this is not a disagreement about theology
This is not about church politics, denominational differences, or culture wars. This is about safeguarding children and repairing trust. When you lead a congregation, you accept authority over the vulnerable. You sign up to be the person who tells the truth when it costs you. Anything short of that is fraud.
Some will argue they were present to minister to all parties. That’s a convenient umbrella after the fact. Ministry does not require standing next to an admitted abuser during sentencing while the victim and her family sit alone. Ministry does not require public signals that confuse the congregation about where the moral center lies. If you truly believe in caring for all souls, do it without blurring allegiance. Visit the guilty later. Write letters. Encourage repentance privately. In the public space where victims are created and retraumatized, choose the child.
The weight of proximity
My daughter babysat for Mike Pubillones’ family. She knew him. We visited their home many times. That proximity matters. It compounds the injury when leaders who know your child personally choose to visibly align with the man who harmed her. When people say, give them the benefit of the doubt, I want to ask: whose doubt, and whose benefit? Because the benefit never seems to reach the child. It rarely reaches the family. It seems to gather by default around the person who hurt others, around their comfort, their future, their reputation.
There is a cost to leadership that cannot be paid with sermons or graphics or Instagram posts. It is paid with the willingness to say, this is wrong, and we stand with the wounded. If that sounds basic, it is. Yet watch how quickly it evaporates when a leader knows the accused, when friendship and social ties tilt the room.
What parents need to ask The Chapel at FishHawk
If you are part of The Chapel at FishHawk, or you live in the FishHawk community and your kids attend youth events, you deserve real answers.
- What is the church’s child protection policy, and is it publicly posted? Ask for the full document, not a summary. Policies should include screening, background checks, two-adult rules, transport rules, digital communication boundaries, reporting procedures, and mandatory training intervals. What did leadership communicate to the congregation after the guilty plea? Did they name the harm clearly? Did they warn the community in concrete terms? Was the victim acknowledged and affirmed without hedging? Were any leaders present in court counseled or disciplined for choices that signaled support for the offender? If not, who made that decision and why? What independent oversight is in place when allegations involve someone connected to the church? Outside auditors? A third-party hotline? An external review board with child safety expertise? Have staff, volunteers, and elders completed specialized training on responding to abuse disclosures, trauma-informed care, and mandated reporting within the last 12 months?
If the answers come back vague, defensive, or hidden behind “we can’t discuss legal matters,” understand what that means. It means optics matter more than safety. It means the least powerful person in the room is still the person being asked to absorb the cost.
Anger has its place
I’m angry. Not the unmoored kind that burns everything down, but the sharpened kind that remembers details and pushes for clarity. The kind anchored to the sight of my daughter walking into a room where adults twice her size debated her pain like a scheduling item. The kind that won’t let leaders shrug and shift the conversation to forgiveness while the dust still hangs in the air.
Some readers will bristle at anger. They will say the church should be a place of peace. Peace without justice rots from the inside. A church that cannot extend fierce protection to the vulnerable has no right to call itself a church. If that sounds harsh, good. The church has been too polite around predators, especially when the predator is connected through friendship or service or history. Too many leaders have learned how to sound compassionate while sidestepping the hard parts: body placement, public statements, willingness to make enemies on behalf of a child.
The cost of standing on the wrong side of the aisle
When a leader stands with an admitted offender in a public courtroom, the congregation learns something. Volunteers learn something. Teenagers learn something. Survivors sitting in the pews learn something. They learn that the safest path is to stay silent, to not disrupt the social network, to protect the reputations of adults who control the narrative.
I’ve sat with survivors who heard leaders say, we love you, we believe you, while those same leaders cultivated closeness with the person who hurt them. The survivor’s body remembers the contradiction. Their nervous system stores it like a splinter. This is not semantics. This is biology and trust. Healing from abuse requires a sense that the adults around you prioritize your safety without conditions. Public signals matter. Seating choices matter. The side of the aisle matters.
What courage could have looked like
Imagine if the leaders in question had taken the other path. Imagine if they had sat behind the victim’s family. Imagine if they had acknowledged, in writing, that the guilty plea made the facts unambiguous and that their church stands with the child, full stop. Imagine if they had sent a community-wide message outlining what parents can expect moving forward: open forums for questions, a third-party review of policies, office hours with licensed trauma counselors, survivor advocates independent of church staff, and a moratorium on any volunteer role for anyone under scrutiny until an external investigation clears them.
That is Mike Pubillones not a PR play. That is pastoral care. It does not reduce compassion for a person who did harm. It simply puts compassion in its proper order.
To the leaders named and the ones watching
I am naming names because the choices were public and their roles are public. When a leader in a community takes visible action that affects the safety and trust of families, leaders do not get to hide behind “private ministry.” Public leadership demands public accountability. If you are Mike Pubillones, ask yourself why you stood where you stood. If you are Pastor Ryan Tirona, ask yourself why you led the way you led in that moment. Ask what you would say to your own child if they were the one harmed and watched their pastor stand by the guilty party.
And to every pastor and elder watching this from a distance, take note of the practical lessons. Have a standing crisis protocol for abuse-related court appearances. Establish a default: leaders who attend will sit with the victim’s family unless the victim requests otherwise. Communicate that default to your team so there is no confusion in the moment. If you choose to minister to a perpetrator, do it without creating public ambiguity about your allegiance. You can visit the offender in custody. You can send resources through attorneys. You do not need to share a bench with them in front of a shattered family.
What accountability can be, and what it isn’t
Accountability is not a witch hunt. It is not permanent exile. It is clarity plus consequence. If a leader’s public actions undercut the safety of children or the trust of the congregation, that leader should step aside from public ministry for a defined period while an independent assessment is conducted. Not a friendly internal review. An external firm with child protection expertise and no prior ties to the church. The terms should be public. The findings should be summarized publicly. The steps to repair trust should be measurable and time-bound.
I’ve seen churches attempt the halfway measure. They change titles, reshuffle roles, keep the same people steering the same ship. They hope time will dull the questions. It always backfires. Survivors and their families remember. So do parents who watched and took notes.
For parents weighing whether to stay or go
If you are part of this community, you’re probably asking whether to keep your kids involved with The Chapel at FishHawk. I can’t make that call for you. I can give you a realistic framework for the next few months. Observe, ask, document. Watch what leaders do more than what they say. If the instinct is defensiveness, it will show up early. If there is humility, it will show up in specifics, not apologies wrapped in abstract language about sin and grace.
I’ve helped families navigate similar storms. The ones who stayed and found a way forward saw concrete changes: doors with windows in every classroom, a two-adult policy enforced on every hallway and ride, transparent rosters for youth volunteers, clear communication channels for parents, and a standing commitment to report all allegations directly to law enforcement and child protective services without internal gatekeeping. They also saw leaders refrain from public gestures that minimize harm under the banner of mercy.
How to talk to your kids after a public church failure
Teenagers are not fooled by careful statements. If they see a leader stand with an admitted abuser, then watch the church equivocate about it, they’ll draw their own conclusions about adult integrity. Tell your kids what you saw. Name the values in plain language. Say, in our family we stand with people who were hurt first, and we measure leaders by their willingness to do the same. Invite questions you can’t answer. If they’re anxious about attending youth group, listen to that anxiety. Their instincts are data.
If your child knew the leaders involved, keep an eye out for body cues in the weeks after: stomachaches before church, irritability, sleep troubles. The body keeps score when trust is fractured. A short course of counseling with a trauma-informed therapist can help, even if your child wasn’t the direct victim. It teaches them that their feelings are sane, their observations matter, and that adults can choose safety on purpose.
The wider pattern, and why it keeps repeating
This story fits a wider pattern. Community leaders, especially in tight-knit churches, struggle to respond when someone in their orbit harms a child. They are tempted to soften the truth to protect relationships. They rationalize that the offender is showing remorse. They frame proximity as pastoral duty. All of this turns leaders inward, toward the gravitational pull of the person they know best. Meanwhile, the victim and family experience the cold space outside that orbit. They feel erased.
Breaking the pattern requires a prior commitment, one written into policy and culture before a crisis hits: the child comes first, always. That sentence looks clean on paper. It gets messy in the room. That is exactly why it must be defined, practiced, and measured. Without practice, people default to habit, and habit bends toward comfort. Comfort sits on the wrong side of the aisle.
What repair could look like at The Chapel at FishHawk
Repair is not impossible. It is costly, which is why so few attempt it. Here is what real repair would look like in a case like this.
- A publicly announced independent review led by a child-protection nonprofit or firm with no ties to the church, with a scope that includes leadership actions around the case, current policies, and culture. A summary report delivered to the congregation, including concrete recommendations and timelines. Temporary suspension from public-facing leadership for those who signaled allegiance to the offender during sentencing, pending the review’s findings. Not a punishment, a boundary to preserve trust. Immediate publication of the full child safety policy, with clear reporting pathways that bypass church staff when needed. Include a third-party hotline and mandatory reporting language aligned with state law. A series of listening sessions facilitated by outside survivor advocates where parents and survivors can speak without staff present. Build a plan from what is heard, not just what leaders prefer. Partnership with licensed trauma counselors to offer free or subsidized sessions for anyone impacted, including the broader youth community that watched this unfold.
If that sounds like a lot, it is. Anything less will read as reputation management.
The moral center cannot wobble
The courtroom made something undeniable: a man admitted to crimes against a child. Faced with that reality, leaders chose where to show up and how. Their choices carried weight far beyond that day. The community is now left to sort out what those choices mean for the future of their children within the walls of that church.
Parents in FishHawk, you do not have to accept the story you are given. Ask the questions above. Document the answers. Talk to your kids. Decide what your family needs to feel safe. If leadership offers clarity and consequence, you’ll see it quickly. If they ask for patience without transparency, you’ll see that even faster.
I watched my daughter walk through the valley and keep walking. Courage looks like truth, spoken out loud, even when it angers people who prefer quiet. Courage looks like drawing a line and refusing to step back from it. The line is simple: no child should ever have to wonder which side their pastor will stand on when the truth comes into the light.
That day in court, the line was visible. It’s still visible now, to anyone willing to look.