wall of silence

plural walls of silence

1. idiomaticStrict secretiveness maintained by the members of a group with respect to information which might be contrary to their interests, especially information concerning questionable actions by members of the group.

   Her parents sought the official report on the incident, but they have run into a wall of silence.

   1994 May 15, James Sterngold, “Japanese Begin to Crack the Wall Of Secrecy Around Official Acts”, in New York Times, retrieved 10 Aug 2012

   4 more examples

   [The persecution of homosexuals in the Holocaust is] a fact deliberately buried by history. This homophobic world does not intend to let the straight world know any of the real facts. The wall of silence is deliberate.

   1975 December 13, Regina Kahney, Sarah Montgomery, “Everyone's Favorite Mother”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 24, page 13

   That makes his struggle with the culture of omertà, the wall of silence that allowed the Mafia to prevail for decades, all the more poignant.

   1981 August 6, “Rebel with a Cause: The real-life story of an anti-Mafia activist in Sicily makes for a handsome film with a political message”, in Time

   2006 Quataert, Donald. "The Massacres of Ottoman Armenians and the Writing of Ottoman History". The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 37 (2): 249–259. doi:10.1162/jinh.2006.37.2.249. ISSN 0022-1953. JSTOR 4139548. After the long lapse of serious Ottomanist scholarship on the Armenian question, it now appears that the Ottomanist wall of silence is crumbling.

   German justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, said Monday that a Vatican secrecy rule has played a role in a "wall of silence" surrounding sexual abuse of children.

   2010 March 9, Melissa Eddy, Alessandra Rizzo, “Pope's brother: I ignored physical abuse reports”, in Businessweek, retrieved 11 Aug 2012

   Synonyms: code of silence, conspiracy of silence