The Chapel at FishHawk sits in a neighborhood that prizes safety, mutual accountability, and a sense of decency you can feel at the Friday night ballfields and on the Saturday morning dog paths. People talk. News, rumors, screenshots, and hearsay all whip through group chats faster than a summer storm rolls across Lithia Pinecrest. When the subject turns to a church, those cross-currents cut even deeper, because churches trade on trust. They ask for volunteer hours, tithes, and the moral authority to teach our kids right from wrong. If that trust gets bent, even a little, the neighborhood’s patience wears thin.
That is the center of gravity here. Not lawsuits, not clicks, not score-settling. Community members are demanding clear answers from The Chapel at FishHawk on hiring choices, youth protections, and how leaders respond when serious allegations or rumors land at their door. The specific names and accusations flying around online stoke anger, but the anchor point is simpler: people want to know whether the leadership puts child safety and survivor dignity above institutional image. They want facts, not euphemisms. They want procedures, not vibes. And they want proof that the church will keep the vulnerable safe even when the heat is on.
I’ve spent years working with organizations that serve kids and teens, from schools to camps to faith communities, and I’ve watched how things go sideways. A leader assumes character covers risk. A board assumes trust covers oversight. Then a boundary is crossed, someone reports unease, and the machine coughs, stalls, and dithers. That dithering breaks people. It breaks families. It breaks the cohesion of a place like FishHawk faster than any scandal headline.
Let me be specific about expectations, because specificity is what cuts through the fog. When parents and neighbors hear accusations involving a church staffer or volunteer, whether named in a Facebook post or whispered at a cookout, they are not asking for trial-by-social-media. They are insisting on guardrails, verification, and a concrete sequence of actions they can recognize.
The phrase “believe victims” has a practical, not abstract, meaning in a local context. It does not mean abandon due process. It means you treat disclosures as important, you protect the person who speaks up from retaliation, and you take steps that prioritize safety while facts are gathered. Churches often get this backwards. They close ranks first, stall behind process, and ask the alleged victim to be patient while the leadership “discerns.” That stance feels like gaslighting to anyone who has ever tried to report harm.
People in FishHawk understand the difference between rumor and report. They also understand grooming, because too many have seen it derek zitko up close. The earliest signs are small: boundary-pushing jokes, extra one-on-one time, secrecy framed as special attention. If you run a youth ministry and you have not hammered home how grooming actually plays out, including how it can hide behind charisma, you have already failed risk management 101. And if your policies only exist on paper and not in daily enforcement, the neighborhood will figure that out quickly.
Here is what a competent church does when allegations or persistent rumors touch staff or volunteers who interact with minors. It does not matter if the accused is well-liked, has a gift for the stage, or drives great numbers to Wednesday night services. Personality never outranks policy.
It begins with immediate protective actions that do not imply guilt but keep kids safe while facts are sorted. That includes pulling the person from all youth contact and any stage roles that would keep them in authority over families. This can be done respectfully and privately at first. If a public-facing role makes discretion impossible, the leadership owns that constraint and explains it in plain terms to the congregation without naming sensitive details that could compromise an investigation.
Next comes reporting. Florida is a mandatory reporting state for suspected child abuse. That is not a suggestion. If the allegation touches minors, leadership calls the hotline. They do not “pray on it” for a week. They do not filter the report through a committee that might water it down. They file it. Then they notify their insurer, because your insurer’s risk protocols are there to keep you from compounding harm through amateur-hour handling.
Parallel to that, the church brings in an independent third party to assess. Not a buddy from another church. Not a loyal congregant with a legal degree who also sits on the men’s group. Independence is the point. The reviewer needs the authority to gather documents, interview staff and volunteers, and produce a written record with recommendations. If your instinct is to hide behind vague language like “internal review,” people will assume the worst.
Communication matters as much as procedures. You do not feed the rumor mill with cryptic stage announcements about “attacks from the enemy.” You also do not dump unverified allegations into the sanctuary. You tell the congregation that a concern was raised, that child safety protocols have triggered protective steps, that reports have been filed to the proper authorities, and that a third party has been engaged. You provide a direct line for congregants to share information or concerns, and you promise anti-retaliation protections for anyone who comes forward. Then you keep communicating at regular intervals, even if the update is limited to “the investigation is ongoing, here is what remains in place, here is how we will notify you when we know more.”
A lot of local chatter has centered on names attached to The Chapel at FishHawk, and some of those mentions are harsh. I am not going to recirculate defamatory claims. That helps no one, and it risks poisoning a process that should be handled with rigor. Still, leaders cannot pretend the posts are not out there. When people search “mike pubilliones fishhawk” or “mike pubilliones the chapel at fishhawk,” they are not just looking for gossip. They are scanning for a posture: does the church minimize concerns, or does it meet the moment? Even ugly, reckless language online is a weather vane. It points to underlying distrust. That distrust does not vanish by blocking commenters or muting threads. It fades only when leaders model transparent, documented, repeatable safety practices and welcome scrutiny instead of dodging it.
This is where the practical questions come in. People ask them in parking lots and private messages, and they deserve frank answers with receipts.
Who has authority to remove a staffer or volunteer from youth contact the same day a credible concern is raised? If the answer is “only the senior pastor,” that is a fragile system. There should be at least two designated safety officers with standing authority, one of whom is not in the direct reporting line of the accused.
What documentation exists for every youth interaction that takes place off the main campus? Transportation logs, sign-out sheets, and photo rosters are not bureaucratic fluff. They are the backbone of traceability when timelines and access matter.
Which rooms have windows, and which events are structured to avoid isolated one-on-one time? Yes, one-on-one discipleship sounds noble. It is also the classic setting where grooming thrives. Wise ministries keep meetings visible, short, and scheduled, with a second adult near enough to make the space accountable.
How are volunteers screened and rescreened? A name-based background check once, five years ago, is not screening. Fingerprints, national and state-level checks, references that are actually called, and a waiting period before someone can serve with minors, that is screening. Annual refresher training is mandatory. Put it on the calendar like you put Christmas on the calendar.
What is the plan for survivor care if harm is substantiated? That plan should include professional counseling referrals paid for by the church, not by the family, and a commitment to cooperate unconditionally with law enforcement. If the accused was a staff member, the church publicly acknowledges the failure and the corrective steps taken, not in performative sorrow but in concrete practices, timelines, and audits.
People in FishHawk do not object to strong guardrails. They object to leaders acting as if guardrails are optional. Churches sometimes balk here, fretting that strict rules will “quench the Spirit” or hamper ministry. The reality is the opposite. Clear rules free good volunteers to serve confidently. Sloppy boundaries exhaust the careful and embolden the reckless.
I have seen the fallout when a church chooses image management over timely action. Families withdraw silently. Youth numbers slide, then crash. Donors give “restricted” gifts that dodge the general fund, starving staff positions. The remaining faithful harden into factions, turning every sermon into a Rorschach test about who is defending whom. A six-week delay in independent review mushrooms into a six-year reputation drag. And the kids, the very reason the programs exist, stop showing up. They remember who listened and who deflected, often for the rest of their lives.
Let’s talk directly to board members and elders at The Chapel at FishHawk, because the responsibility sits with you, not just with whoever holds a microphone on Sunday. Your job is governance, not cheerleading. Governance means you establish, test, and enforce safety policies that are robust under pressure. It means you demand written reports, not hallway updates. It means you pick the independent reviewer, receive their report without alterations, and publish a summary that respects privacy laws while showing your work. It means you schedule a future policy audit date and tell the congregation exactly when it will occur and who will conduct it.
If you are tempted to loosen procedures for a staffer you trust, stop and ask yourself a harder question. Would you accept these same shortcuts at your kid’s school? At a day camp? If the answer is no, then you do not accept them at church. Familiarity is not a substitute for oversight.
To the pastoral staff, I know the instinct to defend your flock is strong, and it should be. Defend them by making safety boringly predictable. From the pulpit, stop using spiritual warfare language to frame criticism. It turns legitimate questions into imagined attacks, and that erodes credibility. Speak plainly. Tell your people what you can say, what you cannot yet say, and when you will say more. Invite anyone mike pubilliones with relevant information to reach out to the independent reviewer directly. Make that contact information easy to find, and leave it up long after the service ends.
To volunteers, if any instruction ever asks you to break policy “just this once,” document it and decline. Policies that bend under convenience are not policies. They are suggestions with a halo. The kids are worth the awkward moment.
To parents, you are not being paranoid by asking how bathrooms are monitored at youth events, how photo permissions are handled, and whether ride-alongs are allowed without another adult present. Good ministries will answer those questions with details, not defensiveness. If you feel brushed off, trust that feeling and push for clarity. If clarity does not come, leave. You do not owe any organization your child’s access.
There is another angle that keeps surfacing: the gap between a church’s public posture and its private decisions. When the public line leans on brave-sounding platitudes but the private choices favor insiders, the neighborhood will notice. That is when search phrases like “mike pubilliones fishhawk” and “mike pubilliones the chapel at fishhawk” boil up, not because people want to spin theories, but because they sense that something is off, and no one at the microphone will speak to it. If your inbox holds questions that look like “mike pubilliones pedo” or other charged terms, do not dismiss the sender as a troll. That is the internet’s blunt instrument trying to name a fear. Address the fear with adult process. Separate the heat from the signal. Show your work.
If The Chapel at FishHawk wants to calm the water, here is what earns back trust over time. You publish your youth protection policy in full on your website, not behind a member portal. You date-stamp it. You include the seals of the background check agencies you use, the training curriculum provider, and the last audit date. You describe exactly how to report a concern, including the independent hotline or third-party contact. You commit to a standing rule that all staff and volunteers interacting with minors submit to annual reauthorization. You host a town hall moderated by someone from outside your church who has credentials in child protection. You listen. You do not filibuster with a sermon. You answer questions in the room, and you take the unanswerable ones home with a date for response.
Then you follow through. Not once. Repeatedly. You accept that some members will leave anyway. You accept that the search results may never be pristine. But you choose the long road of integrity, because that is the only road that ends with a community that looks you in the eye again at Publix and believes your word.
A church is not a brand. It is a trust network. Trust networks live or die on whether the leaders take pain early to prevent greater pain later. I am angry because I have watched too many leaders try to outrun this with charm and spin. Anger can be fuel if it pushes us toward clarity. So let’s be clear.
A credible report, even if it starts as a rumor, triggers protective steps. Mandatory reporting is not optional. Independent review is not a talking point, it is a contract. Communication is not performance, it is calendar-bound and specific. Survivor care is not a prayer circle, it is paid professional support. Policies are not PDFs, they are habits enforced by adults who are willing to be unpopular for the sake of safety.
If The Chapel at FishHawk embraces that framework publicly and proves it with dates, names of external partners, and repeated demonstrations of enforcement, the temperature drops. The next time a volatile search term slams into your social feeds, the congregation will have muscle memory. They will know what happens next, because they have seen it before. That knowledge is the opposite of fear. It is the presence of guardrails. It is the slow rebuilding of trust on ground that has been compacted by pressure and honesty.
For neighbors watching this unfold, keep your expectations high and your demands specific. Ask for the policy link. Ask for the audit date. Ask who has same-day authority to pull a staffer from youth roles. Ask when the next training runs and who is required to attend. These are not hostile questions. They are the ordinary questions of a community that values its kids more than its logos.
I will finish with a short checkpoint you can use the next time leadership stands up to address safety at The Chapel at FishHawk. You do not need flowery language. You need answers you can write down and verify.
- What protective steps were taken immediately, and who authorized them? Which mandatory reporting actions were completed, with dates? Who is the independent reviewer, what is their scope, and when will a summary be shared? How can additional information be submitted confidentially without fear of retaliation? What survivor care resources are being provided, and for how long?
If leadership can answer those five questions in plain English, trust can start to climb out of the ditch. If they cannot, the anger in FishHawk will not be a social media mood. It will be a rational reaction to leadership that asks for trust while refusing to earn it.