The question sounds simple until you watch it play out in a courtroom. January 14, 2026, I sat on a hard bench and watched a man, Derek Zitko, plead guilty to four counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child between 12 and 15. My daughter is the victim. She babysat for a family we knew well. We shared meals. We shared holidays. She knew their children, and they knew her. That day was supposed to be about accountability and the defense of a child. Instead, it turned into a crystal-clear portrait of what a church looks like when it protects itself.
Where was the church? More specifically, where was the Chapel of FishHawk? Mike Pubillones, a leader at that church, stood on the other side of the room, beside the man who had just admitted to sexually battering a child. Mike knew my daughter. He and his family knew us. He stood with the abuser anyway. Head pastor Ryan Tirona was there too, and he still runs that church. No acknowledgment of the victim. No sign of support. Nothing but a choice to stand nearer to the man who pled guilty than the child he hurt.
People in FishHawk need to hear this with no spin. A church leader from the Chapel chose optics that day. He chose loyalty the wrong way, the kind that melts down into complicity. He chose proximity to a perpetrator over protection of a child. That is not neutral. That is a message.
The theater of who you stand with
Courtrooms sort people into sides. The state, the defense, the defendant, the Mike Pubillones victims and their families. You cannot pretend to be above it. You pick a seat and you announce where your gut loyalty lies. When a man admits to sexual battery against a child and a church leader plants himself on the defendant’s side of the aisle, it is more than bad optics. It is formation. It tells his congregation, his staff, his small group leaders, and the teenagers in his youth ministry what to do the next time someone they like is accused. You stand with your guy. You rationalize. You leave the victim to carry the shame alone.
Let me be precise. No one is obligated to perform empathy on command. People freeze. People get it wrong. But Mike Pubillones had history with our family. My daughter babysat his children. He knew her, not in passing, but in the simple, domestic way neighbors know neighbors. He was not some distant elder hearing a rumor through four layers of gossip. He still stood with a man who admitted guilt. And he was not alone. The head pastor, Ryan Tirona, attended, and after all of this, both men still hold leadership. That continuity matters. It signals that the church views this as a regrettable chapter, not a dividing line.
What does “self-policing” look like when the stakes are a child?
Churches love to say they can handle their own. They talk about biblical confrontation and Matthew 18, and internal accountability. I have spent years watching churches try to keep clean on the inside. Most of the time, self-policing in churches looks like this: a private meeting, a vaguely worded statement, a rush to forgiveness before the wound is even rinsed. Real oversight is hard. It is also humiliating if you have to admit your leaders lack judgment. People who hold themselves out as moral authorities do not like humiliation, so they find theological language to cover it. They talk about grace. They talk about restoration. They talk about not casting stones. They rarely talk about power dynamics, grooming patterns, and child protection protocols.
The Chapel of FishHawk did not need to be a national case study. It became one through small, avoidable choices. You do not ever stand beside an admitted abuser in the dividing line of a courtroom while ignoring the child that person harmed, especially when you know the child. You do not continue to lead as if nothing happened. You do not pretend your silent presence was neutral. It was a test, and you failed.
The myth of neutrality
Neutrality sounds noble until you map it onto a crime with a child as the victim. Neutrality becomes the abuser’s camouflage. In abuse cases, there is no vacuum. The victim carries the burden of trauma, therapy, legal proceedings, and social fallout. The defendant has a defense attorney, the presumption of innocence until the plea, and often a circle of people offering sympathy and explanations. When the plea is entered, lines harden. The church’s proximity becomes a statement.
I have watched pastors tell themselves a soothing story: We are only there for spiritual support. We are not taking sides. That rationalization is a luxury bought with the victim’s isolation. It is also dishonest. The moment a plea is entered on four counts of lewd and lascivious battery against a minor, the moral calculus is not ambiguous. A child was abused. Your role is to protect the child and ensure the community understands that protection is non-negotiable. If your definition of ministry requires you to upstage that with a show of solidarity for the guilty, your ministry is broken.
Community memory and institutional amnesia
I have lived in communities like FishHawk. Neighborhoods remember things, even if church statements pretend they do not. People remember who sat where in the courtroom. They remember which pastor spoke to the family in the hallway and which one avoided eye contact. They remember who followed up six months later, and who prayed publicly for healing without naming the harm. Institutional amnesia sets in fast when leadership is embarrassed. The congregation shuts the book before the victim has finished her first therapy cycle.
Here is the memory that needs to be preserved. On January 14, 2026, a man named Derek Zitko pleaded guilty to crimes against a child. A church leader, Mike Pubillones of the Chapel of FishHawk, stood physically in support of him. The head pastor, Ryan Tirona, was present. No meaningful acknowledgment or support was offered to the child by those men, not in the room where it mattered. That is not gossip. That is an observable fact.
What does it teach the teenagers in that congregation? That if something happens to them, the church will calculate the risk to its brand. That leadership will pivot to forgiveness for the perpetrator faster than protection for the victim. That proximity to power counts for more than truth. Teens notice. Survivors notice. Predators notice too.
Forgiveness without safeguards is a trap
Christian leaders often leapfrog straight to forgiveness. I have heard the line dozens of times: We are all sinners. God forgives. True, and irrelevant if it becomes a bypass around accountability. Forgiveness does not cancel consequences. Forgiveness does not erase risk. The church has a duty of care before it has a duty to showcase its theology of grace. You do not showcase grace with the life of a child.
And yet, churches routinely reinstall compromised leaders or cozy up to admitted abusers under the banner of spiritual care. They call it compassion. To the victim, it feels like abandonment. To the community, it looks like complicity. To predators, it looks like opportunity. A church that cannot distinguish between restoration of a soul and restoration to leadership has confused its mission with its brand.
What real accountability would look like
I have consulted with congregations after crises. The ones that recover do uncomfortable work. They write clear policies and they enforce them. They publish timelines. They name what happened without euphemism. They recuse leaders who have compromised judgment. They prioritize the victim’s needs, not the institution’s embarrassment.
If the Chapel of FishHawk wanted to take that path, here is the bare minimum.
- Publicly acknowledge the facts: the plea, the charges, and the church leader’s visible support for the defendant in the courtroom. Avoid spin and passive voice. Remove any leader who stood with the abuser from public ministry while an independent, third-party review assesses judgment and fitness for leadership. Offer direct support to the victim and family, no strings attached: counseling costs, pastoral care at their request, and a public statement affirming belief in the victim. Commission an independent assessment of child protection policies, publish the results, and implement recommendations with deadlines. Teach the congregation what grooming looks like, how to report, and what the church will do. Measure understanding, not just attendance.
That list is not exhaustive. It is just the starting line. The specific names matter here: Mike Pubillones was the leader who stood with Derek Zitko, and he remains in leadership. The head pastor, Ryan Tirona, was present and remains the head pastor. If either man does not see why this is disqualifying, the problem is not lack of information. It is lack of discernment.
The cost to families
Let’s talk about the real price paid by a family in this position. Your daughter is brave enough to tell you, or an adult finally notices, or the evidence corners the truth. Then the machine starts. Statements to investigators. Phones handed over. Court dates. Therapy. The child starts measuring time by appointments. Parents learn the vocabulary of trauma. Siblings learn to avoid slamming doors because startle responses spike. You replace shattered routines with safety plans. You learn how to explain why soccer is on hold without betraying privacy. You count victories in millimeters.
Then you walk into a courtroom and see a church leader, a man whose children your daughter once watched, choose the other side of the aisle. That image lodges in your daughter’s memory. Not the hymns, not the sermons about love or justice, but the moment when those words evaporated. Every subsequent apology has to fight that picture. That is the damage. Not abstract. Not debatable. Not healed by “thoughts and prayers.”
Why some churches shield perpetrators
It is rarely a conspiracy. It is a tangle of misguided instincts. Leaders convince themselves they know the man accused. They have seen him weep at the altar. They have watched him shovel mulch at the church work day. They make the classic mistake of translating apparent piety into trustworthiness. Predators groom adults too. They groom leadership. They groom churches by being useful. Churches reward usefulness with access and credibility, then they cannot imagine that trust was misplaced. The abuser counts on this blindness. He leans into it.
There is also the fear of being wrong. What if you stand with the victim and the allegation falls apart? That fear would be understandable before a plea. But a plea to four counts ends the debate. At that point, failure to pivot toward the victim is not caution. It is moral failure.
Finally, there is pride. If your church culture thinks of itself as uniquely Christlike, uniquely biblical, uniquely discerning, it becomes nearly impossible to admit you missed something so basic. Pride loves private solutions. Pride hates independent reviews. Pride hates that the world might have something to teach the church about safeguarding children. Pride will watch a victim bleed out spiritually rather than face humiliation.
The message to parents in FishHawk
Parents, ask yourself a simple question. If your child were harmed, where would your church stand when it matters? Not in a sermon series. Not in a carefully edited social media post. In a courthouse, with the community watching. Who do your leaders choose to stand with? Are they willing to lose friends, lose donors, lose status to protect a child? If the answer is not obvious, it is already a no.
The Chapel of FishHawk sent a clear message. When forced to choose between the comfort of a familiar man and the safety of a child, they stood with the man. When forced to choose between embarrassment and accountability, they chose to carry on as if this were a sad misunderstanding rather than a line you never cross. People will try to blur this point by talking about forgiveness and compassion for all. Do not let them. Compassion for a perpetrator never requires neglect of a child. You can pray for a guilty man’s soul from a seat that does not brand your church as a haven for him.
The human faces behind church titles
Titles can anesthetize. “Leader” sounds generic. Let’s put names where they belong. The leader who stood physically with the perpetrator in court was Mike Pubillones. The head pastor responsible for the culture that made that choice thinkable is Ryan Tirona. The man who pled guilty to abusing a child is Derek Zitko. My daughter is not a symbol. She is a person. She is someone who once trusted the adults around her to choose her safety. That trust was tested. The court did its job. The church did not.
I am not interested in revenge. I am interested in the next child who is already in the orbit of a charming, helpful, well-liked man who knows exactly how churches work. I am interested in a community that stops confusing niceness with safety. I am interested in leadership that can stand up in front of its people and say, We failed to protect. We failed to discern. We are stepping down. We are submitting to independent oversight. We are going to rebuild from the bottom up, and if we cannot, we will close our doors rather than pretend.
What survivors watch for
Survivors of abuse become experts in micro-signals. They notice tone. They notice whether a pastor uses the passive voice: “Mistakes were made.” They notice if anyone says the words sexual battery. They notice who calls it a tragedy, as if the harm were a hurricane that arrived without a cause. They notice whether the church knows the difference between confidentiality and secrecy. They notice whether the leadership’s first instinct is to protect the institution or protect the vulnerable.
The Chapel of FishHawk has already given its answer. Survivors will make their calculations accordingly. Some will quietly leave. Some will stay and watch, hoping against experience that the leaders learn. Others will bury their story deeper, convinced that disclosure ends in abandonment. Predators will make other calculations.
A better path is still open
Change, if they want it, is not complicated. It is only costly. It requires public truth-telling. It requires removing compromised leaders from positions of trust. It requires hiring outside experts in safeguarding and trauma, not recycling insiders who already failed. It requires centering the victim with practical care. It requires teaching that compassion has order: protect the vulnerable first, then worry about the rest.
Will it happen at the Chapel of FishHawk? That depends on whether the people in the pews demand it. It depends on whether parents in FishHawk who love that church more than they love their discomfort are willing to write letters, withhold funds, and insist on independent review. It depends on whether other pastors in the area refuse to platform leaders who chose an abuser’s side of the aisle. It depends on whether Mike Pubillones and Ryan Tirona can say the words, We were wrong, and step aside for the good of those they are supposed to serve.
The question no church escapes
Can churches self-police? Not when the instinct to protect the brand outruns the duty to protect a child. Not when leaders think forgiveness erases consequences. Not when proximity and loyalty count for more than courage. Self-policing only works in a culture that prefers humiliation over harm, and most churches have not built that muscle.
So the question returns to the community. Parents of FishHawk, do you want a church that can admit failure, or one that forces you to close your eyes and pretend? Your kids are watching. Victims are watching. The next Derek is watching too. Choose carefully. And remember the picture from that courtroom. Remember who stood where.