Police said the girl was taken by a woman who identified herself as the child's mother and signed her out. The woman was wearing a black, Muslim-style niqab that left only her eyes uncovered.
The girl was found the next morning by a passerby at a playground near 69th Street and Patterson Avenue in Upper Darby.
Saturday's rally began at the intersection of South 60th Street and Hazel Avenue, right outside the school. What began as a circle, with some holding hands, turned into a compact crowd due to difficulty hearing the multidenominational prayers.
The event was billed as a grassroots gathering of women, but because men came out as well, the crowd was split by gender to march separately through the neighborhood.
Speakers with bullhorns offered varied chants, with some calling for the perpetrators to turn themselves in or for anyone with information to step forward. Mixed in with the calls for justice were chants about peace, reflecting some demonstrators' larger concerns about neighborhood safety.
After a brief circuit around the neighborhood, including a moment of silence at a street corner where the girl had been captured on video, demonstrators handed out white balloons to be released into the sky. The balloons represented innocence and purity, group leaders said.
One activist said the community wouldn't stop looking for the girl's abductors.
Contact Jonathan Lai
at 856-779-3220, jlai@phillynews.com, or follow on Twitter @elaijuh.
