(Photo: Associated PressAP)

Three weeks after her disappearance, the search for 2-year-old Detroit toddler Bianca Jones continues.

On Christmas Eve, the family of the girl held a church vigil in her honor, singing “Jesus Loves Me” and wearing buttons with pictures of Bianca, missing since Dec. 2.

As time passes, the outcome of the search continues to look bleaker, but her family refuses to give up hope of finding her alive and well.

"With each passing day, it's getting harder and harder," Kelly Jones, Bianca's aunt, told the Detroit Free Press, "but we're leaning on each other for strength."

On Dec. 2, Bianca’s father, D’Andre Lane, 32, reported he was hijacked by a gunman, who drove off with the 2-year-old. Ten minutes later, the car was found by police without Bianca inside.

In the weeks since her disappearance, disturbing details have emerged including a polygraph test that Lane failed, and spots in Lane’s bedroom that a cadaver dog, trained to detect human decomposition, identified.

Lane has not been charged in his daughter’s disappearance and says that people are trying to make him the “bad guy.”

Bianca’s disappearance is just one of many incidents of African-American children reported missing in the past few months. Last week, Arizona police said they believed 5-year-old Jahessye Shockley, who has been missing for more than two months, was killed and dumped in a trash can. And, on Tuesday it was reported that a babysitter and trusted neighbor confessed that he beat a 9-year-old Indiana girl to death with a brick and then dismembered her, hiding her head, hands and feet at his home and dumping the rest of her remains nearby, police said Tuesday.

If you have any information on missing children, authorities urge you to contact the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST) or call 9-1-1.

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