More than 2,000 service members, the majority of whom are students at the Naval Air Technical Training Center, attended the organization's 'Light Up the Night' event April 29 at Naval Air Station Pensacola.

Supporting Navywide Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, NATTC's Coalition of Sailors Against Destructive Decisions organized the sunrise event, which featured guest speaker, Navy veteran and sexual assault survivor Timothy Jones.

Jones spoke for nearly 20 minutes, describing his experience with sexual assault in the mid-1990s and the changing perception of sexual assault during the past two decades.

"When I served in the Navy at the age of 19-years old, I was sexually assaulted and endured some traumatic events," he said. "That put me on a 20-year journey to them today. I wanted to impress on them [NATTC students] that they are the next generation, that they have the ability and a duty to ensure that the culture is vastly different from when I served, that for those who report a sexual assault that there is a culture of acceptance, that there is no victim blaming."

Organizations such as the Fleet and Family Support Center's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response program are dedicated to providing support for victims of sexual assault -- something Naval Air Technical Training Center Executive Officer Cmdr. Scott Sherman said events such as the NATTC CSADD-led 'Light Up the Night' served to reinforce.

"It's great to get the young men and women out this morning and show them that regardless of what may have happened to them in the past, that the Navy has resources to provide them support," said Sherman. "We have a diverse population here [at NATTC] with an average age of 20-years old and 23 percent of our student population is female. It's important that they understand that we have resources available for them, for both sexual assault prevention and sexual assault recovery if they've been a victim of sexual assault while in the Navy or before they joined the Navy."

Jones, who also spent time speaking with several students after the event, added that sexual assault can affect anyone, and hoped his personal message impacted the predominantly NATTC-student audience.

"Sexual assault does not care what your rank is, it doesn't care your sexual orientation and it doesn't care who you are," Jones said. "It is something which needs to be stopped and for each and every one wearing a uniform, it is our duty to carry that forward to say that we will not tolerate sexual assault."

Event organizer and NATTC CSADD Advisor Air Traffic Controller 1st Class Rudolph Christopher said the event is something he hopes audience members will remember and carry with them to future duty stations.

"These students are the future of the Navy," said Christopher. "They're going to take these stories and take them to their next duty station. The student population can be the ones who are experiencing the SAPR cases -- they're the ones who could be reporting, the ones who see or are victims and don't report. We're trying to empower them and provide resources and knowledge to use and the avenues to take."

For more than 70 years, with the last two decades at NAS Pensacola, NATTC has been providing training and increasing readiness within the Naval Aviation Enterprise. The facility graduates approximately 15,000 Navy, Marine Corps and international students annually and is the largest training facility in the Navy post Recruit Training Command.

NATTC is part of the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training, which provides single site management for Navy and Marine Corps aviation technical training.

CNATT is the technical training agent for the Naval Aviation Enterprise, an organization designed to advance and sustain naval aviation warfighting capabilities at an affordable cost, and is the largest training center under the Naval Education and Training Command.

For more news from Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training, visit http://www.navy.mil/.