A victim may be too frightened to report because she knows doing so will infuriate the abuser and further endanger her children. As discussed earlier, any time an abuser senses that he is losing control of the victim, the violence and risk increase. See Victims and Offenders and Risk Assessment.

This fear also promotes recantation – the victim may report, but she is subsequently scared into silence. For example, one woman interviewed in Diane Russell's Rape in Marriage reported that despite repeated physical and sexual assault by her husband, she was "too scared to convict him" when he was arrested. She feared it would make her life at home even worse once he was released. (Russell, Rape in Marriage, 1982 at 93.)