The young teenage girl was thrown from a moving car like a piece of discarded litter.

When she had recovered enough to be interviewed she told detectives from Greater Manchester police a story that lifted the stone on a criminal subculture in which men systematically and routinely groom young girls whom they target anywhere young people gather – including cafes, takeaways and outside school – in order to rape and sexually abuse them, often passing them on to others.

Some are paid with drugs, cigarettes and drink, and all become so convinced that what they are involved in is a normal, loving relationship they introduce their friends or sisters to the men, only for them to be drawn into the abusive circle too.

Detectives discovered the crime was going on in almost every area of the Greater Manchester force, with children on the fringes of society – runaways from family homes and the care system – the predominant victims.

In the worst cases the girls were being trafficked across county borders to be handed on to other abusers, including some victims whose abuse continued when they were moved to the care system in the south of England.

Today, five years on from hearing what the young girl had to say, Greater Manchester police rates child sexual exploitation as one of the greatest threats in its force area. It has used techniques developed to deal with organised crime gangs to pursue the perpetrators, including covert policing, and maintains four permanent inquiry teams who work with other agencies to investigate perpetrators and provide long term protection for children targeted on the streets.

But experienced detectives know the problem is not new nor confined to Manchester and surrounding towns. "This is hidden crime and unless you go looking for it you don't find it," said Detective Chief Superintendent Mary Doyle, who leads a new public protection unit in the force set up to investigate child sexual exploitation.

"Whatever the data says, the issue is much bigger. Most of the victims we deal with are between 13 and 16 and missing from home, their home or a care home. No one ever explored this before. You have to explore it and make the connection.

"Hand on heart I don't think there is a community anywhere where I could say it won't be happening there."

Doyle and others in the field dismiss claims from some forces, including the Metropolitan police, that the problem does not exist in their area. Scotland Yard told the Guardian: "This is not a known reported problem." Doyle believes that Wednesday's report from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre will require every force to start looking for the crime in its own area.

Within Greater Manchester police there are live investigations into child sexual exploitation as a result of localised or street grooming in 10 out of its 12 divisions. They involve potentially hundreds of perpetrators and victims. This month, in the biggest operation to tackle the crime ever undertaken by the force, 12 men were arrested on suspicion of trafficking in the UK for the purposes of sexual exploitation involving a potential 39 victims.

The men allegedly met girls outside shops and at bus and train stations in Manchester city centre and offered them food and takeaways. The grooming would then progress to giving them drink and drugs before they were allegedly taken to parties in Manchester and Salford and encouraged to engage in sex with older men. The men were later bailed but the inquiry is continuing.

In another operation 11 men from Rochdale have been charged with conspiracy to commit penetrative sex with a girl under 16 in a case allegedly involving four teenage girls.

As a result of another operation, Iranian-born Homayon Narouzzad, 34, from Bury, will be sentenced on Monday after admitting 34 offences of sexual activity with a child in a case involving five girls targeted at a fast food restaurant.

Many of the Greater Manchester investigations involve Pakistani men. "We cannot shy away from the fact that the majority of offenders are Asian in two of our operations but a lot of that is about demographics," said Doyle. "So it is just as likely to be white suspects and white victims in another area."

Despite the efforts put into targeting the crime, convictions were not always possible, Doyle said. Recent figures from Barnardo's show that in 2009 the number of known victims was 2,656 but there were only 89 convictions, which the charity put down to an over-reliance on the victim as the mainstay of the prosecution case.

Doyle said other ways of prosecuting cases must be explored but in some cases – for example in rape – the crown needed the victim to give evidence for the prosecution to take place.

"The young people are incredibly damaged," she said. "Often they just don't see themselves as victims and do not want to be witnesses. The sexual exploitation has been normalised for them.

"So this work cannot just be about judicial outcomes. It is about putting the young people back together and diverting them from that behaviour. We are talking about the rape of young people. Next to murder it is probably the most serious crime there is and this is about doing the right thing."