You spoke. The Air Force listened.
The Air Force's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, headed by Maj. Gen. Gina Grosso at the Pentagon, will not direct a stand-down day in 2015.
Airmen instead will participate in a 90-minute training course led by a base SAPR expert. They'll also be required to complete 20- to 30-minute exercises once per quarter in which an airman — ideally a first-line supervisor — leads discussions on a variety of topics.
The change is based on feedback from airmen, Grosso said.
"We do know when people hear they have to stand own for SAPR, they groan. It's too important a topic to have people come into training already unhappy," Grosso said. "We're moving away from the concept of … taking a day where you shut down the mission to talk about this very important topic to really trying to get to a mindset of this is part of our everyday existence. We have to be mindful of creating an environment that doesn't allow this crime to happen."
Commanders will schedule the 90-minute training, which must be completed by the end of the year, she said. Topics, will include prevention and retaliation.
Two of the small-group discussions must cover male victimology and victim empathy. That's partly in response to data released by the Defense Department in December that showed only about 20 percent of male victims report the crime.
More than half of survey respondents who said they'd been sexually assaulted also experienced some form of retaliation.
"What can every airman do to make sure that doesn't happen, to take personal responsibility to make sure no victim ever feels retaliated against?" Grosso said.
Airmen will also see a growing emphasis on prevention, starting with a four-day summit in January at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. About 150 airmen of all ranks and career fields will meet with civilian prevention experts, Grosso said.
"We've had a lot of really smart people trying to get at this. But what we haven't done is get airmen from the field and ask them to think about their environment ... and help us really think our way through this," she said.
Participants will be required to present a prevention plan to senior Air Force leaders at the end of the summit.
"This is the start of a process," Grosso said. "What can we do as an enterprise ... to get to an end state of dropping this prevalence to zero?"
