There are moments when a community learns who it is. Not who it claims to be on Sundays, not what it lists on the website under beliefs and values, but what it chooses when a child is hurt and a courtroom is the stage. On January 14, 2026, the FishHawk community had that moment. A man named Derek Zitko pleaded guilty to crimes against a child. Not rumors, not hearsay, not vague allegations. Guilty to four counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child between 12 and 15. In the gallery stood familiar faces from The Chapel at FishHawk, including head pastor Ryan Tirona and church leader Mike Publillones. They did not stand with the child. They stood with the abuser.
That is not a complicated scene to read. The optics are not subtle. When a leader who knows the victim’s family chooses to physically stand on the opposite side of the courtroom, support is being allocated, publicly and deliberately. The victim in this case had once babysat for the Publillones family. The families knew each other. The child was not a faceless name in a case file. Yet there was no visible acknowledgment of the victim, no gesture of support from those particular leaders, no verbal solidarity that day. What message does that send to parents, to survivors, to anyone who wonders whether their church will protect them if the unimaginable happens?
This is not about a debate over forgiveness. This is not about grace as cheap cover for cowardice. This is about judgment and moral courage, about how leaders behave when naïve neutrality is not an option. Because once a man pleads guilty to sexually abusing a child, there is no moral symmetry to be found by spreading compassion evenly across the aisle. There is a victim. There is an abuser. And there is the watching community, which takes its cues from who shows up, where they stand, and what they say.
The public choice and its private cost
People often underestimate the weight of physical presence in court. Lawyers argue. Judges sentence. But the gallery, packed with faces, tells the community what is acceptable. When a child victim looks around and sees church leaders shoulder to shoulder with the abuser, the message lands like a verdict of its own: your pain is negotiable, your safety is secondary, your voice is inconvenient. Even worse, that silent framing strengthens the old, rotten logic that has protected abusers for decades in institutions that preach compassion while practicing self-preservation.
I’ve worked with organizations after abuse crises, and the pattern is eerily consistent. Leaders convince themselves that “being there for everyone” is a lofty posture. They imagine themselves as brokers of healing. The reality is harsher. Showing up for a confessed or convicted abuser in a way that is visible and public, especially at sentencing, reads to victims as an endorsement. You cannot “balance” support when one side is a child harmed by a crime and the other side is the person who committed it. Pastors who try to split the difference shred the trust that holds their communities together.
The specifics here matter. We are not talking about gossip at a potluck. We are talking about a legal proceeding after a guilty plea to four counts of sexual battery on a child. We are talking about church leaders from The Chapel at FishHawk, including head pastor Ryan Tirona and a leader, Mike Publillones, who personally knew the victim’s family. The signals are unmistakable. If parents in FishHawk did not know which side their church leaders would take when it mattered, they learned in that courtroom.
Anger is not the enemy. Misplaced loyalty is.
I’ve sat in too many rooms where leaders talk about “not wanting to rush to judgment” while a victim is clinging to the edge, exhausted by the pressure to keep proving what has already been proven. That reflex to hedge is often disguised as humility, but it functions as evasion. It shields adults who don’t want to confront how their instincts failed. It protects a brand and abandons a person. In faith settings, the betrayal feels doubled, because the language of care is used to justify its absence.
The anger in the FishHawk community is not overblown. It is proportionate to the harm and to the public posture that followed. You would not stand next to a drunk driver who killed a child at the victim-impact podium and frame it as ministry. You would not walk into a funeral and plant yourself beside the person who caused the death so the family could see your evenhanded grace. Yet abuse cases are where churches get weirdly elastic about moral clarity. They want to be “different,” to model redemption while the wound is still open. That confusion turns audiences into audiences again: victims sit watching their own sidelining while leaders craft narratives that let themselves off the hook.
The facts in this situation are stark enough. What rankles is the awareness that it did not have to go this way. The Chapel at FishHawk could have chosen a transparent, victim-first posture. Instead, on the day that mattered most, the image was set: leaders aligning with the abuser. And for parents trying to assess whether to trust their children to that institution, images weigh as much as policies.
What credibility requires after a collapse
Churches that want to restore credibility after a betrayal like this cannot issue a bland statement and do a sermon series. You do not repair a breach with abstractions. You repair it with painful specifics, independent scrutiny, changes you cannot control, and a posture that prioritizes those harmed over your comfort, your reputation, and your institutional convenience.
If Pastor Ryan Tirona wants a pathway to credibility, it is not complicated, but it is hard. It begins with publicly naming the misjudgment, in his own words, without hedging. It continues with actions that reduce his own control over the narrative. The pathway I’ve seen work is blunt, costly, and measurable.
Here is the minimum viable roadmap, the one that meets real standards, not the sham version that treats a crisis as a PR hiccup.
- Commission an independent, trauma-informed assessment led by an external firm with no prior ties to The Chapel at FishHawk. Make the scope public, including a review of the church’s response to allegations, background checks, leader training, communication patterns, and the events surrounding the January 14 courtroom presence. Publish a summary of findings with specific corrective actions and timelines. Issue an unambiguous apology to the victim and family, delivered privately by leadership first, then publicly to the congregation. Avoid theological padding and qualifiers. Name the harm: that leaders from the church stood in the gallery in support of a man who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a child known to them. State why it was wrong. Step back from leadership responsibilities where judgment is in doubt. If the head pastor’s presence indicated endorsement or caused harm, take an immediate leave while the assessment proceeds. If the findings confirm failures of judgment or policy, set term limits or transitions that reflect accountability, not optics. Establish survivor-first policies with external oversight. That includes mandatory reporting practices that exceed legal minima, written bans on leaders attending court in support of defendants in active cases of sexual offenses, and a survivor care protocol with funded counseling, advocacy, and a named liaison who is not employed by the church. Open a listening process with safeguards. Host survivor-informed forums moderated by professionals, not staff, where people can speak without fear of retaliation. Accept that some will be furious. Do not defend. Record themes and report back publicly on changes made.
Five actions. All doable. None easy. Every step costs something: money, control, ego, time. That is precisely why such steps rebuild trust. They show the difference between an institution that wants the controversy to die and one that wants the culture to change.
Why the courtroom line matters
Some will ask why this particular detail matters so much. Why fixate on who stood where? Because credibility is not a theory. It is a composite of dozens of visible choices, especially under pressure. Safe leaders do not merely preach concern for victims; they discipline their bodies and calendars to reflect it. They avoid public acts that can be reasonably read as support for an abuser. If they feel called to minister to a defendant, they do it privately, away from moments that telegraph a divided allegiance. They do not appear at a sentencing hearing on the side that will most predictably re-traumatize the person who was harmed.
This is basic risk management and basic shepherding. If a leader somehow missed how fraught a sentencing day is, they do not belong near high-stakes decision making without training and oversight. And if they knew and went anyway, they owe an explanation to the community and to the child. Not a theological justification. A human one. What calculus led to the decision? What safeguard failed? Who approved it? How will it be prevented next time?
I’ve seen leaders try to argue that their presence was about love for both parties. That argument works only in private pastoral contexts, not in public, symbolic arenas. In the courtroom, you are casting a vote. You are choosing whose experience will carry the weight of your visible empathy. If you want to show love to an offender after guilt is established, you visit in jail, write letters, offer accountability for restitution, support family members who were blindsided. You do not stand as a counterweight to the community’s demand for justice.
The damage inside a congregation
When a church handles a case like this poorly, the harm does not stop with the primary victim. Every survivor in the congregation sees the message and files it under “reasons to stay silent.” Every parent recalculates risk. Staff morale corrodes, because staff who know better watch leaders double down on bad decisions to save face. Volunteers burn out fielding calls from angry friends. Attendance may wobble, but the deeper wound is trust. It takes years to rebuild, and sometimes it never comes back. That is why some churches go into a defensive crouch. They tell themselves the anger will pass if they wait long enough.
That approach rots the core. People may keep attending for social reasons, but they stop believing in the leadership. They stop giving unreservedly. They counsel their children to keep distance from programs. The church becomes a house where the lights are on but nobody is home. And once a church has that smell, it is nearly impossible to shake without real, public repentance tethered to specific reforms.
The Chapel at FishHawk can decide whether it wants to be a case study in how to dig out or a cautionary tale that other churches cite when warning their boards what not to do.
The Ryan Tirona pathway, if he wants it
Let’s talk specifically about the head pastor. Titles come with responsibility, and responsibility means owning not just personal decisions but the environment you shape. If Ryan Tirona wants to restore credibility, he needs to treat this not as an attack to outlast, but as a reckoning to embrace. He does not have to resign tomorrow to prove sincerity, but he cannot pretend nothing is amiss.
A credible path looks like this: immediate acknowledgment of harm, immediate suspension of visible leadership duties where appropriate, immediate commissioning of independent review, immediate protection of the victim from any contact or pressure from church agents, and immediate communication to the congregation that center victims, not leaders. Those communications need to name names and events with care, but they must not hide the key facts. Fine print is the enemy of trust.
I know the instincts that whisper otherwise. Lawyers will suggest sanitizing language. PR advisers will propose a statement about “unfortunate misunderstandings” and “support for all involved.” Ignore them. Or better, instruct them that the priority is not litigation posture, but moral clarity. Good attorneys can work within those constraints. Poor ones will not, but that is part of the sorting process in a crisis.
Beyond the first wave, Tirona must make himself accountable to people with authority to say no. If he handpicks an advisory group of friends, it is theater. If he invites credible outsiders with lived experience and gives them power to stop dumb decisions, the culture can shift. Congregants and parents will not be swayed by slogans. They will watch patterns: who gets hired, who gets disciplined, who gets heard, how quickly corrections occur when the church missteps again.
What about Mike Publillones?
His name is now bound to that courtroom scene. He stood with a man who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a child he knew. That choice does not define his whole life, but it defines a moment that matters. Leadership is not a right. It is a trust. If he wants to keep that trust, he must do more than defend his motives. He must listen to the people who felt betrayed, including the victim and family, if they are willing. He must accept consequences that limit his leadership, potentially permanently. He must submit to training and oversight led by professionals who understand abuse dynamics, grooming, and power imbalance. And he must refrain from public ministry in any capacity that puts him in symbolic authority over children, youth, or families until and unless the independent review and the community’s response suggest a different course.
None of that erases the harm. But it signals that the church understands the stakes. It also sets a standard for others who might repeat the same error, thinking that loyalty to a friend outranks protection of a child. It does not. It never has.
For parents in FishHawk deciding what to do next
When you evaluate a church after something like this, do Go to this website not be distracted by tone or charisma. Look for structures. Ask direct questions. Expect straight answers. You owe it to your children to treat this as a safety audit, not a vibe check. The risk calculus changes when you have evidence that leaders can misread a moment so badly.
Use a short, disciplined checklist to guide your decision:
- Are there written, public policies that explicitly forbid leaders from publicly supporting defendants in active child sexual abuse cases, including attendance at court in a visible capacity? Has the church commissioned a truly independent assessment with survivor input, and has it published concrete actions with deadlines? Who is accountable to whom? Can the congregation see the governance structure, including a path for reporting concerns that bypasses the senior pastor? What has the church offered the victim and family, beyond words? Is there funded counseling, an independent advocate, and a commitment to prevent any contact from church representatives without consent? Have any leaders who stood with the abuser stepped back, and if not, why not?
If the answers are mush, you have your answer. If the answers are specific, public, and tied to transparent follow-through, you can watch and decide over time. Trust that is broken should be earned back, not granted upfront.
The spiritual dodge that needs to die
There is a reflex inside many churches to invoke forgiveness as a way to accelerate institutional healing. It sounds holy and functions like a solvent that dissolves accountability. The order matters. Justice and protection first. Clear, public alignment with the victim first. Boundaries that prevent further harm first. Only then do we talk about what forgiveness might look like on the long horizon, for those who choose it. Anything that flips that order is not pastoral care; it is spiritualized self-defense.
Another dodge is to call critics divisive. Division did not start with the community asking questions. Division began when leaders divided themselves from the injured by standing with the person who inflicted the injury. The repair begins with reversing that choice.
What does repentance look like in public?
I am not interested in melodramatic speeches. Repentance looks like phone calls that should have been made on day one, now made with humility. It looks like sitting across from a family you hurt, hearing their fury without interruption, and saying, I was wrong. It looks like stepping aside without making your board beg. It looks like written policies that have teeth, enforced consistently, with names attached. It looks like the courage to tell your loyalists to stop minimizing the harm, to stop portraying your critics as enemies, to stop using scripture as a shield against the truth.
If The Chapel at FishHawk wants to walk that path, the community will see it. If it does not, the community will see that too.
The hard truth about institutional memory
Even if every corrective step is taken, this story will remain part of The Chapel at FishHawk’s identity. It cannot be scrubbed. The goal is not to erase it, but to ensure it becomes the moment things turned, not the moment trust died for good. Structures built in the aftermath are what protect the next child. Leaders who learn hard lessons become the ones who stop the next disaster before it starts.
Parents, you get to decide whether to remain, to leave, or to wait and see. None of those choices is wrong. What is wrong is pretending the choice does not matter. It does, because your children watch what you tolerate. Your community watches what you excuse. And leaders watch what they can get away with.
On January 14, 2026, the lines were clear. A child’s pain was real. A man pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual battery. Leaders from a church stood with him anyway. You cannot un-see it. But you can demand better. You can insist that those who claim to shepherd your families prove it with policies, with posture, and with the kind of costly humility that does not come naturally to people who hold microphones.
The pathway exists. It is the only one that leads back to credibility. It will put Pastor Ryan Tirona and every other leader at The Chapel at FishHawk under a microscope that they do not control. That is the point. The rest is theater, and we have had enough of that.