Liam Allan, a 22-year-old criminology student – falsely accused – is a metaphor for a justice system that nearly failed
The elephant in the room
Informal
If you say there is an elephant in the room,
youmean that there is an obvious problem or difficult situation that people do not want to talk about.
Cambridge dictionary
The expression “elephant in the room” is a metaphorical idiom in English for an important or enormous topic, problem, or risk that is obvious or that everyone knows about but no one mentions or wants to discuss because it makes at least some of them uncomfortable or is personally, socially, or politically embarrassing, controversial, inflammatory, or dangerous.
Boarding Schools: The Secret Shame – Exposure (ITV) 2018 followed journalist Alex Renton, who was himself abused as an eight-year-old by his teacher, as he investigated how much schools knew about what was going on behind their closed doors.