On January 14, 2026, a courtroom in Hillsborough County drew a line that never should have been blurry. A man named Derek Zitko stood to be sentenced after pleading guilty to crimes against a child. Not vague charges, not a technicality, not a misunderstanding. Four counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child between the ages of 12 and 15. The facts were formalized by his own plea. The system did its part that day.
Across the aisle, standing in support of Zitko, was a leader from The Chapel of FishHawk, someone this community knows: Mike Pubillones. My family knows him too. My daughter used to babysit his kids. We have been in his home more times than I can count. Meanwhile, the victim in that case was a child he knew personally. Mike chose a side in that courtroom, and it was not the side of the child. The lead pastor, Ryan Tirona, was also present that day. They stood in that room, saw what everyone else saw, heard the words guilty, and still chose proximity to the abuser, not solidarity with the harmed.
I don’t write this lightly. I’ve spent enough years advising organizations on safeguarding and survivor support to know how fragile trust can be, and how quickly it breaks when leaders choose loyalty over accountability. This isn’t a theoretical argument about theology, doctrine, or reputation management. This is about what adults do when a child is hurt and the truth cannot be denied any longer. What we do in that moment tells on us. It tells children whether they are safe. It tells victims whether they matter. It tells predators whether the ground under their feet is still solid.
The FishHawk community deserves to know exactly what happened and what it means, because the patterns here are painfully familiar. What matters more than words from a pulpit is evidence in practice. If you lead a church and you stand with a man who pleaded guilty to sexual battery of a child, while offering nothing to the child he harmed, you have shown the congregation your priorities. You can publish policies, post Bible verses, and promise accountability until the microphones run out, but your behavior already answered the only question that matters.
The optics are not the problem — the ethics are
I’ve heard the soft excuses before. He was there for a friend. He believes in forgiveness. He wanted to witness to him. He has information we don’t. Let’s take those apart, because each version crumbles under basic ethical scrutiny.
Start with forgiveness. Forgiveness, when it is warranted, never requires proximity to the offender in the exact moment when the victim most needs visible support. If your concept of grace makes you comfortable standing next to a convicted abuser while staying silent about the harm, your compass is set toward the wrong true north. Real pastoral care begins with protection. It centers the vulnerable, not the familiar. It listens before it defends. It communicates, in public and private, that the safety of children outweighs any allegiance.
Now the friend excuse. Pastors and church leaders do not have the luxury of showing up in public spaces as private friends who happen to hold a title. Their presence carries institutional weight. If you carry authority during the week, you carry it in a courtroom. That is the tradeoff of leadership. You do not get to slip off the collar when accountability becomes uncomfortable. Showing up in support of a man who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a child isn’t neutral friendship. It is institutional endorsement. The visual does not lie.
And the information we don’t have? We don’t need private intel to read a plea. The legal threshold for guilt has been met by his own words. When the court accepts a guilty plea, community leaders don’t get to claim ambiguity in order to soothe their loyalty. If there was ever a moment to clarify loyalties, it was then.
The pastoral duty that got dropped on the floor
Good churches put survivor care at the center of their response. They notify the congregation of credible allegations. They respect privacy requests where appropriate, but they don’t obscure truth under a blanket of euphemism. They suspend the accused from any position of authority the moment a credible allegation surfaces, and they communicate concrete steps to protect children. They cooperate fully with law enforcement, provide therapy resources for the victim, and refuse to platform the abuser in any way. After a conviction or a plea, the pathway is narrow and non-negotiable: the offender is not restored to leadership, and the messaging remains survivor-first.
What did we see here instead? Silence where there should have been speech. Standby loyalty where there should have been protective distance. And if you are a parent in FishHawk, yes, you are right to ask what that means for your child. The posture leaders take in moments like this spills directly into everyday decisions: volunteer screening, reporting culture, supervision ratios, room design, transport policies, and whether a teenager feels safe telling a small-group leader that something isn’t right.
When leaders stand with a confessed or convicted abuser in a public courtroom, they train the congregation to minimize harm. They make it risky for victims to speak up, because victims learn that the real currency in this church is relationships, not truth. They also tell potential offenders that if they are well-liked and connected, the church might give them cover or at least the benefit of a public doubt, even after a plea.
The gap between policy and practice
I’ve written or audited dozens of safeguarding policies. I can tell you the warning signs of a performative policy within ten minutes. It has generic language copied from a template. It emphasizes forgiveness and restoration without specifying conditions for safety. It contains aspirational language about “safe environments” but lacks measurable procedures, like two-adult rules, background check cadence, documentation protocols, or mandatory external reporting chains that bypass pastoral bottlenecks. The policy lives on a website or inside a volunteer packet, but staff cannot articulate how it plays out midweek when a teenager says, I don’t want to be in the van with that guy.
The Chapel of FishHawk has a choice now. They can treat this as a PR fire to be put out with statements. Or they can do the harder work of reform. The community should demand the latter. The standard isn’t perfection. The standard is credibility.
If you want to spot the difference between policy and practice, ask specific questions and look for friction points. Who owns the safeguarding budget? Not just the policy, the money. How many staff hours per week are allocated to supervision and training? What percentage of the facilities budget is dedicated to physical safeguards, like windows in every door and camera coverage in long hallways? When was the last time staff did a live scenario training with role-play disclosures? Who has the authority to call police without running it past a pastor? If the answers are vague, you’ve learned something important.
The courtroom matters because it reveals the defaults
I’ve seen communities reframe events like January 14 as a misunderstanding or a moment taken out of context. Don’t let that happen here. The courtroom was a pressure test. In a pressure test, people revert to training and instincts. If the instinct is to comfort the abuser and remain absent for the victim, that reflects the training. It reflects the private conversations that happen behind closed doors, and it reflects who feels safe that their reputation will be protected.
The names matter because people matter. The fact that it was Mike Pubillones, a leader from The Chapel of FishHawk, standing in support of Derek Zitko, and that Pastor Ryan Tirona was present, matters. It is not character assassination to name public actions by public figures. It is accountability. Communities cannot calibrate safety without naming the players and their choices. If leaders believe their presence was misinterpreted, they can say so in plain language, apologize specifically, and explain corrective action. Anything less reads as deflection.
What a survivor-first response would have looked like
Let’s get concrete. If you want to know whether a church is serious about child safety, compare what happened to what should happen. When a member or former member is charged with sexual battery against a minor, a responsible church does the following within days, not months.
- Publicly acknowledges the charges in a factual statement to members and parents, names the steps being taken to protect children, and provides contact information for law enforcement and an independent advocate for survivors. Immediately and indefinitely removes the accused from any position of leadership or influence, bans them from youth spaces and contact with minors, and documents that ban in writing. Offers professional counseling resources to the victim and family, pays for a defined block of sessions, and assigns a point person trained in trauma-informed communication to coordinate needs without gatekeeping. Schedules mandatory training for all staff and volunteers, led by an external specialist, covering grooming behavior, reporting obligations, and scenario-based practice, with attendance tracked and consequences for no-shows. Hires an independent third party to review safeguarding policies, interview staff and volunteers, and publish a summary report with recommendations and timelines for implementation.
Those five actions are not radical. They are baseline. Churches that hesitate here usually do so because they fear litigation, reputational damage, or interpersonal fallout. The irony is that hesitation often worsens all three. Courts and insurers look for evidence of proactive prevention and clear reporting. Congregants smell evasion. Victims notice who shows up.
The human cost of institutional loyalty
Survivor stories often share a brutal pattern. The initial offense is devastating, but the institutional response adds a second wound. When a pastor or elder doubts them, when friends go quiet, when leaders publicly stand with the abuser in a courtroom and then go home to a comfortable dinner, the message lands in the bones: you don’t matter as much as he does. That message echoes for years. It shapes how survivors parent, how they trust, how they pray, and whether they ever darken a church door again.
My family knows this up close. My daughter knew these people. She watched the same men who have preached about justice and mercy choose who to stand with when the stakes were real. She is not a headline or a case number. She is a person who has to live in this community, pass familiar faces in the grocery store, and wonder whether anyone who saw that courtroom scene will say out loud what they know in their gut.
If you are a parent at The Chapel of FishHawk, you are not paranoid for asking hard questions. You are responsible. Ask who your child will be alone with. Ask to see https://zenwriting.net/wychanjqcp/public-outcry-and-institutional-response-the-derek-zitko-debate the policy, then ask to watch it work. Sit in the hallway and count adults. Ask who has keys. Ask how transportation is handled and logged. Ask how bathroom breaks are supervised. Policies that work survive scrutiny. Cultures that protect children welcome awkward questions, even when it slows down programming.
What repentance looks like after a public failure
Words like repentance and restoration get tossed around in these contexts until they lose shape. So let’s give them shape. Repentance, for leadership, means naming the wrong in public without hedging. It means stating that standing in court with Derek Zitko while offering no support to the child he harmed was a failure of pastoral duty. It means apologizing directly to the victim and family, not “to anyone who was hurt.” It means stepping back from leadership, for a defined period at minimum, to allow independent review and rebuild trust. Depending on the history and the findings, it may mean permanent removal.
Restoration here is not about restoring the abuser or instantly restoring the leaders. It is about restoring safety. That restoration is measured not by sentiment but by implementation. Show your work, in writing and on a timeline. Publish a safeguarding plan with dates, budgets, and names attached. Invite external oversight and publish the findings even when they sting. Tie leadership compensation and continued employment to compliance with the plan.
If The Chapel of FishHawk wants to lead, lead here. Choose the harder right over the easier wrong. Tell your people that you failed, then show them what it costs to change.
How communities rebuild trust without forgetting
Trust is not a mood. It is an audit. If you want people to trust you with their children again, don’t ask for it. Earn it. That means predictable transparency. It means updating the congregation when milestones are met and when they are missed, without spin. It means allowing Q&A sessions where people can ask about the specifics of January 14, who was there, what they intended, what they now understand, and how they will act differently.
It also means learning to speak about abuse with accuracy and without flinching. Abuse is not a stumble. It is not a mistake. It is a crime built of choices and patterns, often preceded by grooming that others could have noticed if they had been trained to look. When leaders resist calling a crime a crime, they teach the congregation to soften reality in the name of civility. Civility without truth protects power, not people.
For survivors who are reading this, you are not invisible here. What was done to you was not your fault. If people in spiritual authority failed to stand with you, that failure belongs to them, not you. There are advocates and clinicians in our county who will believe you and help you make a plan. If you tried to report and were ignored, try again with someone outside the church structure, and document every step. You are not being dramatic. You are protecting your life.
What parents should do this week
Most parents I’ve worked with don’t want another brochure. They want steps they can take between school drop-off and dinner. If your family is connected to The Chapel of FishHawk, or to any church wrestling with its safeguarding culture, here is a short agenda for the next seven days.
- Request in writing a copy of the current child protection policy, the date it was last revised, the name and credentials of the person responsible for it, and the schedule for the next external review. Ask to see proof of background checks and training completion for every adult who will have contact with your child this month, and ask how exceptions are handled. For any event involving minors, ask for the supervision plan: adult-to-student ratios, two-adult rule coverage, transportation protocols, bathroom procedures, and incident reporting flowcharts. Set a family code word with your child and teach them two or three exit phrases they can use with an adult to get out of a situation. Practice them out loud until they feel natural. If you attended programs where leaders involved in the January 14 hearing had influence, consider pausing your child’s participation until the church articulates a credible plan with dates and oversight.
This is not alarmist. It is basic risk management. Healthy churches will appreciate the clarity and meet you with documentation, not defensiveness.
The question for Mike Pubillones and the answer the community deserves
So here is the direct question that has to be asked in plain English: Mike, why did you stand in support of a man who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a child you knew, and why did you offer nothing to that child in that moment? The community does not need a dissertation. It needs a clear admission, an apology addressed to the victim, and a description of your next steps, which should include stepping back from leadership while independent evaluators assess the safeguarding culture you helped shape.
And for Pastor Ryan Tirona: what is your plan, with dates and names, to repair the harm, protect children, and rebuild trust? Not your hope, your plan. Who is the independent firm you will hire, when will their report be published, and what authority will they have to recommend personnel changes, including your own?
The Chapel of FishHawk cannot paper this over with soft statements about unity and grace. Unity comes after truth, not before it. Grace does not mean absence of consequence. It means telling the truth about what happened and bearing the cost of repair.
The community’s role when leaders hesitate
If leaders drag their feet, the community does not have to. Parents can coordinate, keep records, and advocate. Survivors and allies can compile a timeline of events and public actions that the church must address. Donors can condition giving on credible safeguarding milestones. Volunteer leaders can refuse to serve until the plan is published and enforced. None of this is hostility toward the church. It is love for the people in it, especially the children.
Crucially, resist the temptation to personalize this into a feud while forgetting the structural issue. The public choices of Mike Pubillones and the presence of Pastor Ryan Tirona in that courtroom are not isolated lapses. They are symptoms of a formation problem. Fixing it requires more than an apology. It requires retraining instincts, instituting hard boundaries, and accepting that some leaders may be disqualified from their roles, not because they are irredeemable as people, but because the office they hold demands a standard they violated in public.
What safety looks like when it finally takes root
You know safeguarding culture has changed when the quiet things start to sound different. Staff meetings build time for risk review as a standing agenda item. New volunteers find the barrier to entry appropriately high and the training rigorous. Teens talk openly about boundaries because adults modeled how to talk about them without embarrassment. Parents receive regular reports on policy compliance, not just devotions. The building itself tells a different story, with sightlines and lighting designed for visibility, not convenience. The budget aligns with the rhetoric. And when something goes wrong, you see swiftness, transparency, and external accountability, not spin.
It can happen. I’ve watched it happen in churches that decided their loyalty to children outweighed their fear of fallout. It costs time, money, and pride. It often costs positions. It is worth every ounce.
January 14 is not going away. It will live in the memory of a child and in the record of a courtroom. The question is whether it will also mark the day The Chapel of FishHawk finally decided to match its message with its methods. Parents of FishHawk, you own a piece of that answer. Demand better. Ask the hard questions. Refuse to be soothed by platitudes.
A child in your neighborhood needed adults to choose her when it counted. Some did. Some did not. That divide is the only metric that matters right now. If a church cannot cross that divide, then it should stop using words like shepherd and protection. If it can, then let it prove it quickly, in public, with receipts.
The path forward is not mysterious. It is simply hard. Choose it anyway.