Throughout the ordeal mother Karen Matthews, her partner Craig Meehan and Shannon's father Leon Rose all said their faith in the nine-year-old kept them strong.

In a heartbreaking interview on Mother's Day, Ms Matthews said: "Today is a day when every mum wants her children around them. I don't want cards or presents, I just want my darling daughter home safely."

Repeatedly Ms Matthews, 32, said she was convinced the little girl was still alive and was "hoping and praying" that she will walk through the door of their home.

At a news conference when Shannon had been missing for two weeks, she said the disappearance had broken her family apart and told how she cried herself to sleep at night and could not go into her daughter's bedroom.

Clutching her daughter's favourite teddy, Ms Matthews said: "Her brothers are asking for her all the time. Her sister is crying. Half the time I cry myself to sleep. Her step-dad, he cries himself to sleep. He hasn't been able to go to work. The family does not feel safe any more. It has broken the family apart. It makes me think, I cannot trust the people who are really close to me — if you have Shannon, please let her go."

Mr Rose, 29, said he went out looking for his daughter every day, and found it hard to tell her 10-year-old brother Ian, who lives with him, that she had not yet been found.

"Every time I come home, and obviously he sees the look on my face, that I've been unsuccessful because I haven't found her," he said last week. "But I've reassured him that one thing's for sure that we will find her. I don't know how, but we will."

Grandmother June Matth-ews said last week: "We used to see her a lot, she would come round for tea. She would peer in through the front-room window. She is a lovely, happy girl.

"I just want to hear her knock at the door and ask me to let her in. She's my little Miss Smiley-Face. We're in hell."

Headteacher Krystyna Piat-kowski said pupils and staff at West Moor Junior School were finding Shannon's disappearance difficult to come to terms with.

"It is difficult for us all because she had a place in school, there is obviously an empty chair," she said. "We would love to see Shannon walk through the gates and be part of the school again."

Stepfather Mr Meehan, 22, had been forced to deny hitting Shannon after it emerged that she had scrawled on her wall that she wanted to move in with her father and brother. The fishmonger said: "I have never hit her or any of the children. We play about, as you do, but me and Karen have a brilliant relationship.

"I love those kids. I know they're not mine but I treat them like they are.

"All I want is Shannon back. No one can accuse me. I know what's true and Karen knows what's true."