See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy RYAN HOOPER, CRIME CORRESPONDENT Published: 14:06 BST, 28 August 2026 | Updated: 14:18 BST, 28 August 2026
Members of grooming gangs have been closely linked to more than 150 other criminals, including drug barons and violent thugs, new research will suggest.Paedophile ring perpetrators across the UK are also connected to protection rackets, according to analysis contained within The Network Map.The project uses police documents, court records and local authority data, as well as interviews with grooming gang survivors, journalists and campaigners.It is said to be the most comprehensive compilation of evidence into the interconnectivity of grooming gang members, and is due to be published imminently.The research will highlight how the perpetrators are carrying out their depraved actions in almost every corner of the UK, according to The Times.Researchers say they are attempting to remedy the failings of previously poor police data collection on the problem, which has been highlighted by a series of independent inquiries.London, Oldham, Bradford and Keighley will be the first areas investigated by a national inquiry into grooming gangs, announced earlier this year.The £65million probe is investigating how the grooming gangs operated and how public institutions including the police, councils, health services, social care services and schools responded. Fugitive paedophile Amar Ilyas is apparently included in The Network Map report due to his links to an organised criminal with drug connectionsFormer children's commissioner for England Anne Longfield is heading up the inquiry, which has the legal powers to compel witnesses to give evidence and requires organisations to hand over documents.Any evidence of crimes uncovered will be referred to Operation Beaconport, the national police operation launched last year to review hundreds of previously closed investigations.Last year an audit by Baroness Casey found that councils, police forces and the Home Office repeatedly 'shied away' from dealing with 'uncomfortable' questions about the ethnicity of rapists preying on thousands of vulnerable girls.Despite years of warnings, she said, the quality of data collected at a national level remained 'woeful and a dereliction of public duty'.With ethnicity still recorded in only a third of cases, Baroness Casey said it was impossible to be certain about patterns of offending at a national level.But her report highlighted data collected by police in Rotherham, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire which showed a 'disproportionate number of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds' among those suspected of grooming offences.The Network Map will apparently draw on evidence of more than 1,000 perpetrators, gangs, families, establishments, and 'notable individuals', including councillors and police officers, who were connected to groomers.More than 150 of the 'notable individuals' are involved in other crimes and are connected to grooming perpetrators, the Time said.Many have direct relationships or are linked through a shared criminal enterprise, family or gang conflict.Among those featured is Amar Ilyas, a serial rapist who attacked girls as young as 12 before fleeing to Pakistan where he remains a fugitive.Ilyas, 41, who used the nickname Killer, 'remorselessly terrorised' girls in Sheffield, biting one victim and using a gun and threats of gang rape to coerce others he abused almost 20 years ago, detectives have said.The Network Map allegedly sets out how he was stabbed in the head by an organised criminal connected to drug trafficking, an event connected by detectives to a separate shooting, it was reported.
