Hostages generally released from captivity or rescued by the State. Battered women negotiate with abuser on their behalf and on behalf of their children. Victim must find a way to leave captivity more or less on her own. Negotiations for release not dependent on their proving they are targets of physical violence nor that they did not desire or provoke it. Unless a battered woman can prove she was subject to life-threatening violence, outsiders are often unwilling to intervene.
Governments attempt to capture and punish hostage-takers.
Abusers are rarely punished, even for decades of abuse, unless the woman or children are killed. Hostages who kill their captors are viewed as heros. Hostages are known to visit captors while in prison and refuse to testify against them. Hostages report feeling that their captors, even those who are jailed, will return to capture them again.