Understanding Institutional Protectionism: The Mike Pubillones Context

Grief is loud in a courtroom. It rattles vents, rides the scrape of chairs, and pierces through those quiet, procedural sentences a judge has to speak. On January 14, 2026, I sat in one of those worn benches and watched a man named Derek Zitko receive his sentence after pleading guilty to crimes against my daughter. The words were not ambiguous. The charges were clear: lewd and lascivious battery on a child between 12 and 15. He admitted it. The court recorded it. No amount of revisionist storytelling changes what a guilty plea means.

I wish this were only about a guilty man. It isn’t. It’s about the choices made by people who claim moral authority, the kind that carries weight in a community where many families send their kids to youth group and trust their pastors by default. It’s about what it reveals when a church leader shows up to a sentencing, looks at a family torn up by a crime against their child, and then chooses a side.

I know the people in this story. My daughter babysat for Mike Pubillones’ children years ago. We spent time in their home, enough to know where the paper towels are and which hallway squeaks. Mike is not an abstraction on a website. He is a leader at The Chapel at FishHawk, a recognizable face and a name people in our neighborhood know. He was in that courtroom. So was head pastor Ryan Tirona. What I saw still seethes under my skin: Mike standing in visible support of the man who pleaded guilty to abusing a child, a child he knew. Not a word to us. Not a glance of acknowledgment for the victim. Not a private message. Nothing.

That choice is not neutral. It screams allegiance. And it exposes a pattern that communities like ours too often excuse as faith, loyalty, or grace, when it is, in practice, institutional protectionism.

What institutional protectionism looks like up close

Let’s strip out the euphemisms. Institutions survive on reputation. Churches, clubs, schools, and nonprofits wrap their identity in a brand of goodness and belonging, and they fight to defend it. The instinct is familiar to anyone who has managed a team or led a group. The problem shows up when loyalty to the institution trumps loyalty to truth, to victims, to children. When leaders circle their own and leave harmed families out in the parking lot.

What happened in that courtroom in January was not a theological debate. It was not a gray-area dispute. The man in question, Derek Zitko, pleaded guilty to crimes against a child. Four counts. The judge read the law. The penalties weren’t symbolic. They carried numbers and consequences. And still, during that moment of reckoning, a church leader who knew our family aligned himself with the abuser.

People will try to explain this away. They will say he was there to support repentance. They will say he was there to keep watch over a sinner, because that is the Christian duty. They will say forgiveness is central to faith and no one is beyond it. Fine. Forgiveness can be personal. Accountability must be public. A leader’s posture in a courtroom is not an abstract spiritual exercise. It is a message to the whole community about who gets empathy, who gets the benefit of the doubt, and whose pain can be ignored because it complicates a narrative.

Standing with a confessed abuser and staying silent toward the victim is not ministry. It is cruelty dressed up as faithfulness.

The quiet calculus behind the gesture

People often imagine institutional failures as grand conspiracies. Most of the damage happens through small, practiced gestures that leaders convince themselves are noble. Here is the calculus, simple and devastating: if leaders at The Chapel at FishHawk publicly support a member who has fallen, they prove they are a church of mercy. If they publicly support a child and a family who were harmed by one of their own, they risk the stain of association and the logistics of a scandal that won’t be managed quietly. They risk donors asking questions. They risk other parents pulling kids from programs. They risk media attention.

So they split the difference. They show up for the abuser and call it compassion, and they ignore the victim and call it privacy.

It’s protectionism, not pastoring. It protects the brand, the network, and the people inside the circle. It leaves the harmed outside, feeling the chill of a door shutting. This is how it works again and again. Not with a press release, but with a posture. Not with a rulebook, but with a thousand omissions.

The betrayal of proximity

It would be one thing if none of us knew each other. If this were simply a tragic case in a large city where everyone is anonymous. But proximity multiplies the harm. My daughter babysat for Mike Pubillones’ kids. He knew her. He knew our family. He had access to us, to our trust, to our hopes that the adults around our children would keep them safe and centered.

When someone you know chooses to stand on the opposite side of a courtroom with a man who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a child, your stomach drops. You start replaying every conversation you ever had in that house. You remember the holidays, the car lines, the potlucks, the moments when church leaders smiled and promised they cared about families. You picture the house where your daughter brought games in a tote bag and read bedtime stories. All of that familiarity now tastes like metal.

People sometimes wonder why victims and their families retreat. This is why. mike pubilliones It isn’t the legal process that breaks them. It’s the social betrayal that happens after the legal process is over, when the people who should call and show up and sit in the ugly awkwardness decide to counsel the abuser instead.

The theology problem no one wants to name

Churches talk about grace as if it magically absolves them from the duties of justice. Not all churches, but enough that it’s a recognizable pattern. Grace without justice is sentimentality. Justice without grace is punishment without hope. Healthy communities know how to hold both. Too many leaders pick the side that keeps their friendships intact.

There’s another distortion at work here: the belief that by supporting an abuser through sentencing, you are modeling the heart of Christ. That is a dangerous half-truth. Faith that prioritizes the soul of the offender while neglecting the healing of the harmed is unbalanced and, frankly, irresponsible leadership. Pastoral care should be triage. You rush to the bleeding victim first. You create distance and safeguards around the person who caused the harm. You cooperate with the law. Then, far down the line, if the abuser commits to restitution and accountability under strict supervision, you talk about what spiritual care looks like. You do not parade support in a courtroom while the child and the family sit a few rows away, invisible.

If forgiveness is real, it has to be tethered to accountability, transparency, and protection of the vulnerable. Otherwise it becomes an umbrella for cowardice.

The unspoken message to parents in FishHawk

Let’s say it plainly. When a leader at The Chapel at FishHawk chooses to stand with an abuser at sentencing and offers nothing to the victim, the message to families is brutal and unmistakable: when the stakes are high, we will protect our own. We will minimize your pain. Your child’s body and future are not our priority. Our loyalty is sideways, not down.

Parents don’t need theological essays to understand that posture. They feel it. They see which phone calls get returned and which don’t. They notice who gets a meal train and who gets a wall of silence. Culture is a thousand micro-decisions, and from where I sit, this culture chose the insider over the injured.

If you lead a church and that stings, good. If you are a congregant and you feel defensive, ask yourself what details would change your mind. A guilty plea happened. A child was harmed. A leader showed up, stood with the guilty, and walked out without acknowledging the victim. That is not rumor. That is an observable pattern of behavior.

What care would have looked like

I’ve spent years working with families in crisis, and there are foundational practices that healthy communities follow when abuse is on the table. These are not optional flairs. They are the bare minimum if you want to call yourself a safe place for children.

Immediate, proactive support for the victim and family: a private outreach, trauma-informed counseling referrals, and clear communication that the church stands with the harmed. Public clarity that the abuser’s actions are condemned: not vague language, but a direct acknowledgment aligned with the facts on record, while respecting legal boundaries. Safeguards and distance: removal of the offender from all ministry and community settings where vulnerable people are present, with compliance to legal restrictions and accountability structures. Transparent cooperation with authorities: no spin, no internal handling. You hand it to professionals and document every step. Education for the congregation: bring in licensed experts to teach about grooming, reporting, and survivor care. Not a one-off talk, but a series that reshapes culture.

Notice what’s missing from that list: public solidarity with the offender at the moment of sentencing. There is no scenario where that act reads as anything but allegiance to the wrong party.

The cost of silence

People who haven’t been through it underestimate the corrosive power of communal silence. Victims and their families don’t just grapple with trauma. They process the second wound of disbelief, minimization, and polite distancing. When leaders go quiet, followers follow. When a pastor and a ministry leader show up for the abuser but fail to show even minimal care for the victim, a signal slides through the pews: stay out of it, keep it tidy, protect the brand.

Children watch us. They learn whether disclosure is safe by observing what happens to those who speak. They learn who gets defended when ugly truth comes to light. They learn whether adults will name evil or give it a soft place to land. Silence is not neutral. It sides with the strongest person in the room.

What I want the FishHawk community to face

The Chapel at FishHawk is not a faceless mega-organization. It is a local church that occupies a moral position in our neighborhood. Its leaders, including Mike Pubillones and head pastor Ryan Tirona, carry social capital. Their choices ripple. On January 14, 2026, they had a chance to show their priorities with their bodies and their presence. I saw a choice that betrayed the vulnerable.

I can already hear the deflections. People will say you don’t know the whole story. Then tell it. People will say this is slander. It is not slander to describe who stood where, who spoke and who did not, and what a guilty plea means in plain language. People will say the church offered private support. We received none. If that claim exists, produce it. Show a timestamped message, a call log, a trained counselor lined up and paid for. Survivors do not need vague assurances. They need receipts.

I am not asking for vengeance. I am demanding honesty. If a church claims to value children and families, then it must prove it when the cost is real, when your friend is the offender, when your reputation is on the line. That is the test.

What repentance would actually require

Repentance is not a mood. It is measurable. If The Chapel at FishHawk wants to show this community that it prioritizes victims over abusers, here is what meaningful change would look like.

A public acknowledgment that a leader’s presence at the sentencing of a confessed abuser, without visible support for the victim, caused harm to the victim and the community, paired with a direct apology to the family. An independent safeguarding audit by a third party with no ties to the church, with the findings published for congregants to read. Mandatory, recurring training for all staff and volunteers on abuse prevention, grooming, mandated reporting, and trauma-informed care, led by licensed professionals. A clear, written policy that forbids staff from publicly supporting an offender at court proceedings, especially at the moment of sentencing, without explicit, parallel care for the victim and family. A standing fund for survivor counseling, administered by an external organization, so families are not beholden to church gatekeeping to receive help.

If that sounds heavy, that is because the stakes are heavy. Children are not props for sermons. They are people with one childhood. A church that cannot center that reality should bow out of youth ministry entirely.

How grooming distorts a whole community’s judgment

People imagine grooming as a predator charming a single child. In practice it often includes grooming the adults and institutions around them. Abusers cultivate trust, volunteer for childcare, serve in visible roles, befriend leaders, deliver competence and warmth. They build a reputation that leaders feel compelled to defend, because acknowledging the truth would mean admitting they missed the signs or ignored them. That cognitive dissonance is powerful. It turns otherwise decent people into apologists for the indefensible.

That is why the posture in the courtroom matters so much. When a leader faces the undeniable reality of the chapel at fishhawk a guilty plea and still signals allegiance to the offender, it reveals how far grooming can penetrate, how thoroughly a community can be conditioned to protect predators at the expense of children. This is not about one church’s image. It is about the psychological capture of people who should know better.

What parents in FishHawk should do next

You do not need to burn down your social life to act with integrity. Start simple. If your family attends The Chapel at FishHawk, ask direct questions. Did leaders stand with the offender at sentencing? What tangible support was offered to the victim? Who delivered it? When? Is there an external audit underway? Are safeguarding policies public and enforced? Ask for specifics, not slogans.

If the answers are vague, consider stepping back from programs that involve your children until real safeguards are in place. You owe institutions no blind loyalty, especially where your child’s safety is concerned. Community is not measured by the number of Sundays you sit in a chair. It is measured by the quality of protection it offers the most vulnerable.

And if you are part of leadership, your choices now will define your legacy. You can double down, bristle, and hide behind legalese. Or you can name the harm, repair with urgency, and set a new standard that other churches in our area will have to meet. Don’t lecture on salt and light if you won’t be transparent under fluorescent bulbs in a fellowship hall.

A final, unvarnished accounting

I watched a man plead guilty to sexually abusing a child. I watched a church leader, Mike Pubillones, stand on his side of the courtroom. I watched a head pastor, Ryan Tirona, present without visible support for the victim. I felt the weight of that choice land on my family, my daughter, and every parent in FishHawk who wonders where to place their trust. This was not an accident or a misunderstanding. It was a moral decision that told the truth about priorities.

You can argue with tone. You cannot argue with outcomes. The Chapel at FishHawk now faces a simple test: either it centers victims and rebuilds with transparency and safeguards, or it continues to protect insiders and hopes the rest of us are too tired, too polite, or too scared to say what we saw.

I am not scared. I am angry. And I am asking our community to pay attention. When children are harmed, you do not stand with the abuser. You do not shake the offender’s hand while the child’s family sits four rows back unraveling. You do not confuse grace with abdication.

You choose the child. Every time.