JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. — Some 150 U.S. airmen stationed around the world arrived here this week to tackle one of the most perplexing problems related to military sexual assault: -- how to prevent it.

The first-of-its-kind summit puts plainclothes airmen of all ranks and career fields — in civilian clothes rather than uniform — together in working groups with the goal of coming up with their own prevention plans by the end of week.

"Each of you brings a unique perspective," Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said in her remarks to kick off the conference Monday. "Alternate viewpoints are good. We need to hear all of it."

Active-duty airmen, guardsmen and reservists came from across the country and across the ocean to participate. They represent installations as varied as Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia; Hurlburt Field, Florida; Dyess Air Force Base, Texas; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; and Kadena Air Base, Japan.

They donned civilian clothing and addressed each other by only their first and last names in an effort to encourage frank, open dialogue regardless of rank.

"We've had a lot of really smart people trying to get at this," SAPR director Maj. Gen. Gina Grosso, director of the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, said in a December interview with Air Force Times. "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."

Kimberly Dickman, chief of the SAPR training and development branch at the Pentagon and the first of more than half a dozen presenters expected this week, asked airmen to think about their end-goal in terms of a metaphor:

You're relaxing by the river when a fellow airmen floats by in distress. After rescuing that airman, you spot another, then another. Soon, Dickman said, the river is filled with thousands of airmen.

Those airmen They represent those who have already been sexually assaulted, she said. You do what you can to help.

But "what's happening upstream? You need to go upstream," Dickman said, and try to stop the crime from happening in the first place.

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