Holding Leaders Accountable: Questions Raised About Ryan Tirona

I spent January 14, 2026 in a courtroom breathing recycled air and counting the seconds until the judge spoke. My daughter sat between my spouse and me, knuckles white, eyes steady. She had already carried more weight than any child should. Across the aisle stood people who had chosen a side. Among them, to my shock and anger, were church leaders we’ve known for years. Standing there in support of a man who had pleaded guilty to crimes against a child. Four counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child age 12 to 15. A child they knew. My child.

I saw it with my own eyes. Mike Pubillones, a leader at The Chapel at FishHawk, on the side of the courtroom reserved for those supporting the defendant, Derek Zitko. And I saw the head pastor, Ryan Tirona, there as well. Not one of them crossed the aisle to acknowledge the child victim or to show a shred of care to a family that once sat in their living room, ate at their table, and trusted their voices from the pulpit. My daughter babysat Mike’s kids. We’ve been to their home more times than I can count. If there is any moment that reveals a person’s belief and allegiance, it is the day of sentencing. Mike and Ryan showed me theirs.

People love to complicate these moments with soft https://thechapelfh.org/ words about grace, friendships, and false equivalence. They will say they showed up for the person, not the crime. They will argue that Christians are called to love the sinner and hate the sin. I know these lines as well as anyone who has been around church long enough to recognize a dodge, a shield raised to avoid moral clarity. But here is the simple truth: presence communicates allegiance. Physical proximity is a vote. When a man stands and pleads guilty to sexually abusing a child, and you choose to stand behind him, you have drawn a line. That choice tells the victim exactly where they rank. It tells every parent in the room what you prioritize.

Leaders have leverage. Pastors shape norms. When a leader from The Chapel at FishHawk plants himself next to a confessed abuser, the message doesn’t stay in that courtroom. It floods back into the community, into small groups, into youth rooms where parents quietly, desperately want to know if their children are safe. If a pastor will believe them. If their story would be welcomed or buried. If grace would be weaponized against them. On January 14, I watched the answers settle into place.

I can already hear the counter-arguments. Maybe they were there to support repentance, not to deny harm. Maybe they believed the legal system had done its job and their presence wasn’t a statement against the victim. Maybe they thought their pastoral role required them to remain neutral, to offer spiritual care without weighing in on guilt or innocence. These sound like reasonable ideas until you put an actual child in the center and remember that the defendant pleaded guilty.

Neutrality disappears when a child has been hurt and the court has accepted a guilty plea. The only faithful, ethical, and sane position for a community leader is to prioritize the victim’s protection, voice, and dignity. That can include praying for the offender and hoping for transformation, but never at the cost of signaling loyalty to the person who caused the harm. That calculus becomes even more outrageous given the personal history. My daughter watched Mike’s kids so he and his wife could go out to dinner, attend events, live their lives. She was part of their household rhythms. He knew her. He looked across a courtroom at a child he knew and derek zitko chose the opposite side.

If you live here, if your kids have ever attended a youth night or a retreat or a Sunday school class at The Chapel at FishHawk, you have a right to ask direct questions. You don’t need titles or theology degrees to insist on clarity. You don’t need to apologize for expecting responsible leadership. You need answers, in writing, that you can hold up next to the actions you’ve seen.

Here are five fair questions I would ask any church leader involved:

You don’t need spin. You need straightforward, documented safeguards. If a church shrugs off these questions or tries to move the conversation into vague spiritual language, that is a red flag. Policy is love measured. Transparency is care made visible.

Let me be plain. The people in question here have names. The assistant pastor or staff leader, Mike Pubillones. The head pastor, Ryan Tirona. Their presence at the sentencing of Derek Zitko was not a small accident. It was a choice with predictable meaning. Their ongoing roles raise a very practical concern: what do these leaders believe about the church’s obligations to victims of abuse? What do they believe about public accountability? How do they handle conflicts of loyalty when friendship collides with justice?

I have worked around enough crisis cases to know what healthy leadership looks like in these moments. A wise pastor knows that even the appearance of siding with an abuser can shred trust for years. He knows that once a guilty plea is entered, the appropriate public posture is grief for the harm done, solidarity with the victim, and clear distance from the offender. He knows any pastoral engagement with the offender must be private, carefully supervised, and never mistaken for endorsement. He knows optics aren’t a PR problem. They are the ethical reality that victims live in, a reality that determines whether they feel safe, believed, and human.

The defense that “we were there to offer spiritual care” collapses under the weight of a courtroom’s architecture. One side sits with the victim. The other sits with the abuser. If you’re confused about what your presence means, ask the child in the front row who just heard a judge recount the details of her assault. Ask her what she saw when she looked across the aisle and recognized faces from the sanctuary.

People talk about betrayal like it’s a single moment, a knife that cuts once. That isn’t how it lands. Betrayal is a process that stretches out, a series of snapshots that won’t stop replaying. My daughter remembers tucking in Mike’s kids, washing dishes after a movie night, staying late so the adults could linger longer. She remembers how their dog would curl up at her feet. Then she remembers the courtroom. She remembers who crossed the aisle and who didn’t. That sequence doesn’t fade. It hardens.

Some will say anger clouds judgment. Maybe. I’m angry. But anger isn’t the same as distortion. Anger often sharpens the outline of a thing. It burns away polite excuses and forces you to look at the facts. The facts are simple. A man pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a child. Leaders from The Chapel at FishHawk stood with him. The same leaders still hold authority. The church has not, to my knowledge, made a public statement acknowledging the harm their presence communicated to the victim and to the community.

Abuse inside or adjacent to a church is never only about one incident. It tests the whole immune system. Good systems isolate infection, protect the vulnerable, and repair tissue. Bad systems cover, rationalize, and preserve status. When leaders stand in support of an abuser after a guilty plea, they weaken the immune system. It tells volunteers that loyalty to leadership outranks empathy for victims. It tells potential whistleblowers to keep quiet. It tells children and teens to expect disbelief if they ever speak.

And it tells offenders something as well. It tells them that community standing is a form of armor, that if they are liked or connected or useful, they can still draw a crowd when they need it most. That calculation is deadly. It has kept predators rotating through institutions for decades.

There is a better way, and it doesn’t require abandoning your beliefs if you’re a Christian. If you believe in repentance and redemption, you must also believe in consequence and restitution. True pastoral care for a person who has harmed a child includes:

This is what love looks like when a child’s safety is at stake. It has boundaries. It never asks the victim to carry the offender’s shame or to sit across the aisle while leaders signal support.

Churches preach sermons about the body of Christ, about how every member matters. Great, then treat the body like a real organism. Bodies communicate nonverbally. If the hand pokes the wound and protects the infection, you have a sickness. When a congregation sees its pastors choose the side of a confessed abuser in open court, that is the church’s body language. You can’t sermonize the message away. You can’t workshop it into a vision statement. The body has spoken.

I know many good people at The Chapel at FishHawk. People who bring meals when someone is ill, who show up at youth games, who pray with intention. If you are one of them, you should be furious. You should demand better. You should insist that your leaders not only apologize, but also submit to outside review. Internal fixes rarely work when trust has been burned this badly. Third-party safeguarding audits exist for a reason. They clear out denial and translate values into policies that hold under pressure.

If The Chapel at FishHawk wanted to repair even a fraction of the breach, they would do several things. First, they would publicly acknowledge that leaders’ presence on the defendant’s side of the courtroom communicated support that was harmful to the victim and to the community. No conditional language, no “if anyone was hurt.” People were hurt. Say it outright.

Second, they would remove from leadership, at least temporarily pending review, anyone who exercised poor judgment in a way that undermined child protection and victim care. That includes both optics and substance. If a leader cannot understand why their physical presence at a sentencing after a guilty plea creates a crisis of trust, that leader is not fit to guide a congregation through safeguarding issues.

Third, they would hire an independent, reputable firm that specializes in faith-based abuse prevention to conduct a comprehensive assessment. They would publish the recommendations along with a timeline for implementation. They would invite survivor advocates into the process. They would commit to annual training for every staff member and volunteer.

Fourth, they would reach out, carefully and with professional support, to the victim and her family. They would offer to pay for counseling with a clinician the family chooses, with no strings attached. No meetings demanded. No public statements required. Just care. Quiet, consistent care.

Finally, they would teach from the pulpit about power, consent, reporting, and the biblical mandate to protect the least of these. Not one sermon. A series. They would name abuse without euphemism and dismantle the bad theology that treats forgiveness like a cheap eraser and accountability like a lack of grace.

This isn’t only a church problem. It is a community safety problem. Schools, clubs, teams, and neighborhood groups should pay attention. If an institution cannot demonstrate basic safeguarding competence, it should not be entrusted with children. That is not persecution. That is prudence. Parents ask hard questions because we have to. We ask because we live with the consequences when leaders fail. We sit in courtrooms and watch our children clutch tissues while a judge reads charges that never should have been needed.

Ask your pastors and youth leaders for their written policies. Ask how they handle conflicts of interest when an alleged offender is a friend or donor. Ask which external experts they rely on. Ask how often they train volunteers and how many volunteers have been dismissed for boundary violations over the last five years. A church that is serious about safety will answer promptly and in detail. A church that bristles is telling you the truth, just not with words.

You know my family. You have seen our faces not only from a distance, but up close in your home and in your sanctuary. You know the child at the center of this harm, not as a statistic, but as someone who folded blankets on your couch and waved goodnight from your driveway. Your presence in that courtroom on the side of a confessed abuser told her she did not matter to you. I don’t care what you intended. I care what you did. Intent does not warm a freezing child. Intent does not unwind a betrayal. Actions do, and yours cut deep.

If you have the courage to own this publicly, do it now. Step back from leadership. Submit to a real review. Don’t hide behind legalisms or theological cliches. Don’t talk about reconciliation like it is a shortcut through pain. Reconciliation, if it ever comes, is built on truth and time. Start with truth. Start with the simple admission that you chose wrong in a moment that mattered more than your reputations, and that children in this community deserve leaders who choose better.

My daughter deserves to walk into any room in FishHawk and know that the adults who claim authority will protect her. She deserves churches that understand how power works, who won’t mistake proximity to an abuser for ministry. She deserves leaders who will cross an aisle for her, not the other way around. The children in this community deserve the same. They deserve to see a courtroom and feel the weight of truth fall on the person who caused harm, not the weight of shock when church leaders stand with him.

People ask what message this sends. Here it is, today, unvarnished: stand with an abuser after a guilty plea, and you tell every child who looks up at you that they are on their own. That they better hope their story never collides with your friendships or your comfort. That grace is a word you use to keep things pleasant, not a force that protects the vulnerable. That isn’t a church I recognize as safe or good. That isn’t a community I will hand my child back to without a fight.

This is not complicated. It is hard, but not complicated. Believe the victim. Protect the child. Stand where your presence says clearly, unmistakably, that harm will be met with consequence, that leaders will be held to account, and that the vulnerable come first. If The Chapel at FishHawk and its leaders cannot do that, then they should step aside and make room for people who can.