What Accountability Looks Like: Steps Forward in the Ryan Tirona Case

I sat in a courtroom on January 14, 2026, and watched a man named Derek Zitko stand and admit guilt to crimes against my daughter. The charges were not vague. Four counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child between 12 and 15. The words hung in the air like a stench you cannot scrub out. This was not a murky he said, she said. This was a guilty plea.

In that room, the lines were clearer than any sermon could ever draw. One side of the courtroom held people who believed the victim, stood with her, recognized the weight of what she had endured. The other side held those who chose to stand with a man who confessed to sexually abusing a child. And on that side, in the seats backing a convicted abuser, stood someone I once trusted around my family: a church leader from The Chapel at FishHawk named Mike Pubillones. With him, by presence and posture, stood his church. The head pastor, Ryan Tirona, was also there.

This is not a rumor. I watched it. My daughter once babysat Mike’s kids. We have been inside his home more times than I can count. He knew her. He knew our family. Yet when it counted, he chose the wrong side of that courtroom, the wrong side of morality, the wrong side of decency. And that choice carries consequences far beyond one case.

What does accountability look like when leaders fail this badly? It starts with naming what happened, refusing to minimize it, and demanding specific steps forward. If you are a parent in FishHawk, you deserve to know what this says about the people holding microphones and influence in your community.

Courtrooms strip away the veneer religion and reputation can paper over. In that room, the offender pled guilty. The facts had cleared the bar of law. The child harmed was a child known to some of the adults sitting on the wrong side of that aisle. There is no soft language that can make sitting in support of the offender defensible. No pastoral tone or “we’re all sinners” gloss can salvage that moment.

When a leader shows up to court and stands with a perpetrator, especially after a guilty plea, that is a public statement of values. The power dynamics are hard to miss. The adult offender gets warmth and presence. The child victim gets silence. The adults in authority close ranks around the person who can shake their hand, look them in the eye, thank them for “being there.” The child gets to watch the grownups she once trusted choose convenience over courage.

This is the rot at the center of so many abuse scandals. Not just the individual who commits the crime, but the ring of enablers who want to be seen as balanced, compassionate, or “neutral.” They talk about grace and second chances for the offender while ignoring the first chance they have to stand with the victim. They choose optics over repair.

Let’s be specific about harm. When a church leader publicly backs an offender in a case involving a child, here is what it communicates to survivors sitting in those pews:

That is not hypothetical harm. Survivors scan rooms for signs of safety. They look for who believes them, who will call the police, who will sit on their side. When leaders tell themselves they are offering “pastoral care” to the person who pled guilty, they need to remember that pastoral care does not happen in a public courtroom without cost. You cannot stand beside a perpetrator in public and imagine the victim will still believe you are safe in private.

In practice, this creates a chilling effect. Survivors do not come forward. Parents think twice about trusting youth leaders. Volunteers see the moral math and decide the church is not where they want to serve. People leave quietly. The ones who stay learn to keep their heads down. Community standards sink around the lowest point of courage.

This is not just about a single appearance in a courtroom. It is about governance, policy, pastoral judgment, and the moral instincts of leaders who hold authority. The question is simple: Who does this church protect?

When a leader like Mike Pubillones shows up to back a convicted child abuser, what does the head pastor say and do? Was there any correction? Any acknowledgment to the congregation that a line was crossed? Any apology to the victim and her family? Or does it all get papered over with “it’s complicated,” “we didn’t know what to do,” and “let’s move on”?

When you strip away the comforting language, the community needs straight answers.

If the answers are no or vague, the message is obvious: the institution prioritizes itself over the people it is supposed to protect.

I have worked with families and survivors across different communities and denominations. The details change, but the pattern repeats. The offender gets empathy, the victim gets suspicion. Leadership defers to the person they have lunch with. They misuse words like grace and forgiveness as if those concepts cancel consequences. Meanwhile, the victim lives with the fallout every hour of every day.

What makes this case worse is proximity. A church leader did not just back an offender in abstract. He backed an offender who harmed a child he knew. There is no reasonable reading of that choice that aligns with safeguarding or basic ethics. And there is no possible defense on the grounds of “we wanted to be present for everyone.” You do not get to be present for everyone when a vulnerable child stands on the other side of your presence.

I have heard all the excuses. We were just trying to be supportive. We wanted to show love. We didn’t know where to stand. My response is steady: you stand with the child. You help the child breathe, testify, get through the day. You do not lend your body as a prop for the defense. If you are somehow confused by that, you have no business in leadership.

Talk is not enough. A statement is not enough. Promises are not enough. Accountability that matters is measurable, with dates, names, and policies attached. You can tell the difference because real accountability costs something. It costs status, convenience, reputation, sometimes even staffing.

Here is the minimum that a church must do in the wake of a failure like this:

None of this is radical. It is basic due diligence for any institution that claims to care for children. If the church cannot muster this, then the community should draw the conclusion for them.

What keeps institutions from doing the obvious? Sometimes it is fear of legal exposure. Sometimes it is pride. Often it is a form of magical thinking that treats “being nice” to everyone as a moral virtue that absolves leaders from making hard calls. That posture does not protect the vulnerable. It protects the brand.

Moral imagination would have looked different. A leader who anticipates the pain of a child survivor would never plant himself beside the person who harmed her. A pastor who understands the optics and the reality of power would never allow his team to do so, and if they did, he would say so out loud and correct it in view of the same community where the harm was made visible.

The most generous reading of what happened in that courtroom still lands on this verdict: it was a catastrophic lapse in judgment that forfeits the credibility of those involved. If leaders cannot tell whose side they are on after a guilty plea, they cannot be trusted to navigate the gray areas that come earlier in a case.

Parents, you do not owe any church blind trust. You owe your children your vigilance. Ask questions that require specifics and dates. Ask about the pipeline from problem to consequence. Ask who is in the room when policies are set and Mike Pubillones whether survivors helped shape them. If the answers are defensive, foggy, or deferred to “board processes,” pay attention.

If you want to stay in the community and push for change, you will need allies. Document what you are told. Ask for everything in writing. Set deadlines for responses. If you are met with silence or spin, that is data.

Some will say that speaking publicly harms the church’s witness. The opposite is true. The public was harmed by what happened in that courtroom, both as a symbol and as a signal. Honest reckoning is the only way to rebuild trust. Secrecy fertilizes cynicism. A church that cannot tell the truth about its failures is not safe for your family.

It matters that my daughter knew these people. It matters that we had been in their home. Familiarity can lull you into thinking harm could not happen here, not with these faces, not with these smiles. It can also skew your judgment when harm does happen, as you reach for the old image of who you thought someone was, rather than dealing with who they are and what they did.

Church culture often rewards that instinct. It sounds like loyalty. It feels like grace. It is neither. Loyalty requires telling the truth even when it hurts the people you like. Grace does not mean erasing accountability or sitting in the wrong seat in a courtroom. Grace without justice is an empty word.

This moment is not just a test for the individuals involved. It is a test for the entire leadership structure at The Chapel at FishHawk. The senior pastor, Ryan Tirona, holds the responsibility to set the tone, act decisively, and make amends publicly. If he was present and did not intervene, he should say that. If he tried to intervene and failed, he should say that. If he supported the decision or rationalized it, he should also say that and face the consequences of his choices.

Leadership is not a badge. It is a burden. When the worst day comes, the job is not to protect your friends. It is to protect the vulnerable. A child victim, known to the people in that courtroom, deserved leaders with backbone. She did not get them. Not that day.

The only path forward is through the truth. Anything else is theater.

Repair is not just a line item in a policy update. It lands in a survivor’s body. It feels like safety and clarity. It looks like adults who take responsibility, make amends, and do not shove the weight back on the person who was hurt.

For repair to be believable here, the church would need to change how it shows up in rooms like that courtroom. It would need to stop confusing public allegiance to offenders with Christian charity. It would need to adopt survivor-informed training, not a quick online module, but real, scenario-based instruction with role plays and consequences. It would need to commit to telling the truth in services, emails, and meetings, even when that truth makes people uncomfortable.

And yes, it would need to evaluate whether those who made these choices should remain in leadership. Retaining them sends a message. So does removing them. Both carry a cost. Only one aligns with protecting children.

Even if you do not attend The Chapel at FishHawk, this is your business. Youth sports, schools, clubs, and neighborhood groups intersect with church communities. Shared leaders and volunteers move between these spheres. Standards in one space influence norms in another.

This is how communities change: by setting the bar in public and keeping it there. If a church chooses opacity or drift, other institutions can raise their hands and say, not here. They can publish their own policies, require training, and share resources. They can refuse to platform leaders who have forfeited trust.

If the church chooses accountability, the community should meet that with support for the survivor and clear-eyed encouragement for the work still ahead. Accountability is not a one-week story. It becomes culture through repetition.

You know what you did. You know where you stood. You know who you turned your back on. You can either keep defending it, or you can do the hard thing and own it.

Ownership looks like naming the harm, not minimizing it. It looks like stepping out of leadership while an independent review runs its course. It looks like calling the victim’s family, not to defend, not to explain, but to listen and ask what repair would look like to them, within reason and without pressure. It looks like telling your church exactly how and why you failed. Not the safer half-truth. The whole of it.

If you cannot do that, resign. Spare the congregation the slow bleed of mixed messages. Spare the victims in your pews the insult of watching you preach about protection and justice after you stood in a courtroom and chose the opposite.

You might be deciding whether to keep your kids in programs at The Chapel at FishHawk. You might be weighing friendships and routines and your child’s sense of belonging. Those are not small things. But your child’s safety and your trust in those who hold authority over them sit above all of it.

Ask the direct questions. Listen for direct answers. If you hear spin, opt out. If you hear humility and see action that costs something, you can watch closely and reassess in stages. Protecting your child does not require you to carry an institution’s reputation on your back.

What happened in that courtroom is the clearest possible signal. A leader named Mike Pubillones chose to stand with a man who pled guilty to sexually abusing a child he knew. The senior pastor, Ryan Tirona, still leads that church. The church can try to outrun that fact with statements, or it can face it and change. Parents, you do not need to wait for their choice to make yours.

Accountability is not revenge. It is the honest admission that safety has to come first. It is the corrective that allows communities to heal on the side of the vulnerable. It is the only path worth taking after a child has been harmed.

And it starts with standing on the right side of the room.