I sat in a courtroom on January 14, 2026, watching a man named Derek Zitko be sentenced after pleading guilty to crimes against my daughter. The words from the bench barely landed because something else burned through the room: on the opposite side of the aisle stood church leaders from The Chapel of FishHawk, including a man my family knew well, Mike Pubillones, and the church’s lead pastor, Ryan Tirona. They stood with the man who admitted to sexually abusing a child, and not with the child whose life had been torn open.
You read that correctly. A plea of guilty to multiple counts of sexual battery on a child. A congregation’s leaders, present and visibly aligned with the defendant. A victim, a family, and a community left with an obvious, searing question: who does this church choose to protect?
I’m writing this because parents in FishHawk deserve clarity and a hard look at governance inside their faith communities. Churches are not abstract symbols. They are institutions staffed by people with titles, budgets, bylaws, insurance policies, and legal obligations. When a child is harmed, how a church responds is the truest audit of its character. Intentions do not matter, optics are not a side story, and loyalty that disregards justice is not pastoral care.
What happened and why it matters
My daughter once babysat for Mike Pubillones’ children. We have been in his home many times. We aren’t strangers to him, or to The Chapel of FishHawk. On the day of sentencing for the man who hurt my daughter, Mike chose to stand on the side of the courtroom that supported the defendant. He did not approach us. He did not express support for the child he knew. The lead pastor, Ryan Tirona, was also present that day. The child who was harmed got silence from the very people who routinely preach about shepherding the vulnerable.
The most charitable spin would be that they were there to “minister” to someone accused of sin. But a guilty plea strips away the haze. There wasn’t ambiguity. There wasn’t a trial with contested evidence. There was a man saying, Yes, I did this. Four counts. The worship of doubt often masquerades as wisdom. In practice, it becomes a shield that protects the powerful and isolates the victims.
I have watched churches mishandle allegations before. I have consulted families and boards when things go wrong. The patterns are grimly predictable: instinctive defense of insiders, pressured silence for the wounded, PR over pastoral care, and a governance structure that concentrates authority in a few men who answer to each other rather than to the congregation or outside oversight. The Chapel of FishHawk’s leaders should know this script and should have rejected it. Instead, by their public posture and continued silence toward the victim, they performed it.
The difference between pastoral care and institutional loyalty
Any church leader can rattle off the tension, even in theory. Shepherds care for both the sinner and the sinned against. The hard work is not about whether mercy exists. The hard work is how you sequence it, where you apply it, and what you refuse to excuse.
When an adult pleads guilty to sexual battery against a child, pastoral care begins with the injured party. You anchor the process in safety, resources, trauma-informed support, and a long timetable for healing. You sit with parents, not the abuser’s supporters. You coordinate with law enforcement, child advocacy centers, and licensed therapists. If you choose to also minister to the offender, you do it separately and in ways that do not signal minimization. You do not appear in court seated or standing in solidarity with the offender, particularly when the victim is in the room. That choice shouts over everything else.
The claim that one can “stand with everyone” rings hollow in moments like this. Courtrooms are binary. So are public signals. A child sees exactly who stood where. Parents see it too. Congregants do not need an internal memo to interpret that image.
Governance is not theology; it is accountability
Churches love to talk about doctrine. Governance gets brushed aside as technical. That neglect is how harm persists. Governance is how you operationalize your values, how you place guardrails on power, and how you prevent charism from replacing character.
A credible governance structure in a church that works with children should have clear answers to basic questions, posted publicly and followed consistently:
- Who is responsible for child safety policies and how is that person independent of pastoral influence? What are the mandatory reporting steps for suspected abuse, and how are they documented and audited? How are conflicts of interest handled when the accused is known to leadership? What are the public communication protocols when a case becomes a matter of record, especially after a guilty plea? What is the standard for leadership presence at proceedings involving victims or offenders connected to the church?
These are not academic hypotheticals. They are the daily choices that prevent moral and legal disaster. A church that cannot point to written policy, training logs, incident reports, and an independent review mechanism is not serious about safety, no matter how warm the lobby feels on Sunday.
The failure mode of “standing with everyone”
I have heard the line a hundred times: we’re there for all sinners, all the time. That blanket statement becomes a cudgel against victims. When leaders show up for the convicted offender in a public way, and do not offer at least equal public support for the victim, they were not neutral. They took a side.
There are responsible ways to care for someone who has done terrible harm. You emphasize accountability, civil consequences, long-term supervised treatment, and a prohibition on contact with minors. You never let a public appearance be misread as endorsement. You do not place the offender’s dignity above the victim’s healing. And you explicitly tell the congregation what you are doing and why, with the victim’s privacy protected and the offender’s risk profile stated plainly.
If The Chapel of FishHawk wants to argue this was a pastoral presence untethered from institutional endorsement, then make that case transparently. Explain to parents why leaders did not cross the aisle to comfort the child who once played in their home. Explain why a leader, Mike Pubillones, remained in his position afterward without so much as a public acknowledgment of harm and remorse for the optics. Churches cannot claim moral clarity on Sundays and hide behind ambiguity on weekdays.
The weight of lived relationships
This part cuts deeper than policy. My daughter babysat the Pubillones children. We ate in their home. That shared history should have made one thing easy on sentencing day: look the child in the eye, name the harm, acknowledge the truth, and offer support. Even a simple gesture of presence can open a path to trust. Refusing it slams the door.
When church leaders compartmentalize like this, victims internalize the message. They learn that proximity does not protect them, that old dinners mean nothing when the institution feels threatened, and that titles limit empathy. This is how people walk away from faith communities, not because they ceased to believe, but because they believed the wrong people.
The role of the senior pastor
Leadership sets culture. Ryan Tirona was present that day. The top of the org chart carries the most responsibility for what a leader’s presence communicates. If a senior pastor attends a proceeding involving a convicted offender and a child in the congregation, he must calibrate his actions with precision, prioritizing the victim. That means careful seating choices, visible support for the family, and explicit guidance to staff and lay leaders about boundaries. If his associate or lay leader chooses differently, he corrects it. Silence is complicity. Vagueness is evasion.
It is not enough to privately care. When a case is public and the offense is admitted, your stance should be public too. Pastors ask their communities to trust them with money, marriages, and children. That trust is not a blank check. It is audited by action, particularly under pressure.
What parents should ask right now
Parents in FishHawk have the right to ask direct, practical questions. Charitable assumptions belong to last year. The safety of children demands specifics.
Here is a focused set of questions to put in writing to The Chapel of FishHawk’s leadership and board:
- Has the church retained an independent, third-party firm to review its handling of this case and its child safety policies? If yes, who, and when will findings be shared? Does the church have a current, written child protection policy that includes background checks, two-adult rules, room visibility, and mandatory reporting? Where can parents read it? What guidance, if any, did leadership give staff and volunteers regarding public appearances with the convicted offender, including court proceedings? What direct support and communication were offered to the victim and family, and on what timeline? Will any leaders who appeared in support of the offender be subject to disciplinary review, remediation, or removal from leadership roles?
These are not gotcha questions. They are baseline expectations for any institution that touches the lives of children.
The legal and ethical tightrope churches prefer to ignore
Churches often confuse legal exposure with ethical responsibility. They let their insurance carriers or attorneys throttle communication, which can be wise in open investigations but corrosive once a guilty plea is entered. After a conviction or plea, the public record exists. Careful, victim-centered communication will not harm a church legally. It may protect it, because juries and judges notice when organizations place safety above reputation.
Ethically, nothing prevents a pastor from saying: we grieve with the victim, we recognize the great harm done, we are examining our failures, and we commit to changes. Nothing prevents immediate training for volunteers, temporary pause on youth activities until policies are reviewed, or the appointment of a safeguarding officer who reports to an independent advisory panel. When leaders refuse to do these small things, they tell the truth about their priorities.
The optics that form a witness
Church leaders sometimes treat optics like a PR problem. They are not. Optics are the ordinary person’s lens for character. A pastor’s seat in a courtroom matters because it speaks. A leader’s silence after a child’s assault matters because it thunders. Congregants are not naive. They see and they remember. Young people, especially, can smell the dissonance between sermons and behavior.
When The Chapel of FishHawk’s leaders stood in that courtroom, the optics said: our first instinct is to stand with our own. The child, even a child we know, will have to carry the burden of initiating contact if she wants care. That is backwards. When harm strikes, leaders should carry the burden, not heap it on the wounded.
Plausible defenses, and why they fail
I can anticipate the defenses, because I have heard them in other churches:
We were there to minister, not to take sides. Ministering involves presence with the wounded first. Public presence with the offender creates side-taking by default.
We reached out privately. Good, then say so, with the family’s consent. But if private outreach did occur, it did not include public acknowledgment of harm, and it certainly did not include crossing the aisle in the courtroom to offer comfort.
We did not know the full facts. A guilty plea to multiple counts is not ambiguous. If basic facts were still unclear to leadership at sentencing, the governance is already broken.
We feared saying anything that would cause legal issues. There is a careful way to speak that does not admit liability. Silence is not caution, it is abdication.
We love both parties equally. Children are not parties. They are vulnerable persons under your care. Equal love means unequal posture, tilted toward protection of the one who was harmed.
What real accountability would look like
If The Chapel of FishHawk wants to demonstrate integrity, it can choose a path that does not require spin or blame-shifting. The blueprint is well known among organizations that have taken safeguarding seriously.
Step one: publicly acknowledge the harm and apologize to the victim and family for any actions or omissions that compounded their pain. Keep names private unless the family chooses otherwise.
Step two: suspend from leadership any individual whose public actions created the appearance of support for the offender, pending a review. This would include evaluating the role of Mike Pubillones and clarifying whether his courtroom posture aligned with church policy or personal judgment.
Step three: retain an independent safeguarding firm with no ties to church leadership to audit policies, training, and the church’s handling of this matter. Publish a summary of findings and a timeline for implementation.
Step four: mandate trauma-informed training for all staff and volunteers who interact with minors. Track attendance. Repeat annually.
Step five: establish an independent safeguarding advisory group that includes at least one survivor, one attorney with child welfare expertise, and one licensed clinician. Give them real authority to recommend action, and commit to reporting back to the congregation.
None of this is punitive. It is the basic posture of a church that wants its people, especially its children, to trust it.
The human cost behind governance failures
Governance can feel abstract until you sit in a courtroom and watch the distance between policy and practice play out in the bodies of children. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepubillones/ My daughter will carry this for years. Therapy is not a switch. Recovery does not follow your liturgical calendar. It takes time, money, and patient community. When the people who taught her memory verses choose to stand with the man who harmed her, the wound widens.
That cost shows up in the quiet parts of life. A teenager who no longer wants to be around youth group. A parent who hesitates before driving down the church entrance. A young sibling who watches all of it and learns what love means in a crisis. Governance is not paperwork; it is love translated into procedures that hold when emotions surge.
A word to congregants who feel torn
If you attend The Chapel of FishHawk and your stomach turns reading this, listen to it. Loyalty to leaders is not the same as fidelity to Christ or fidelity to your children. Ask your questions. Demand answers in writing. If you receive fog, consider stepping back until the fog clears.
Some will worry that speaking up will split the church. The split already exists. It is between those who prioritize protection of children and those who prioritize protection of leaders. Refusing to take sides only reinforces the wrong side. The right side is the one that keeps kids safe, dignifies victims, and demands humility from those with authority.
The reality of reputation
Reputation is fragile, but it is not the point. If a church does the right things now, some will still leave. Some will never trust again. That is the price of past decisions. The only question worth answering is whether future children will be safer. Reputation that survives truth is worth having. Reputation built on silence is worth losing.
Where this leaves The Chapel of FishHawk
As of this writing, Mike Pubillones remains a leader at The Chapel of FishHawk, and Ryan Tirona still heads the church. They were present in the courtroom where the offender admitted guilt. They did not signal support for the child in any visible way. The community can decide what that means, but it cannot pretend it did not happen.
Parents in FishHawk, your task is simple and urgent: protect your children, then test your church. Ask the questions. Watch the answers. Look for policies, not platitudes. Pay attention to who leaders stand beside when the stakes are highest. That is the cleanest audit you will ever get.
If a church truly believes in grace and truth, it should welcome the audit. It should place safety above discomfort, follow transparency over instinctive defense, and choose the child every single time.