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Your abuse report is confidential in that it is only seen by the staff dealing with it. Provided that you don't complain about anyone publicly in the forums (which is against the site rules anyway), no ordinary chess.com member will be aware that you have made a complaint.

It would not be practical to allow anonymous complaints. In order to examine the evidence (in game chat, or a message sent to you - or a comment made about you in the forums), the alleged victim is necessarily identified.

Also, it would not be sensible to allow anonymity. This would encourage some members to blacken other people's reputations unfairly without any consequences to themselves.

good suggestion, though abuse reports are confidential.

Hmmm... I know some members make abuse reports very public in the forums

Could you achieve the same effect by minimising the information in your profile, and placing the information instead in a group forum with access restricted to group members - or in your blog?

There may be a place for it.  Distinguish between 1) this guy cheated against me and 2) this guy cheats in general.  Or 1) this guy said something rude to me vs. 2) this guy has something offensive in his home page (for all to see).  When the reported is (presumably) the only victim, then you are quite right that anonymity would be pointless.  But in the other case, is it not reasonable to allow someone to just say, essentially, take a look at this member, and to do so anonymously?

But some people would find everything offensive and be forever complaining. Chess.com staff would would be swamped with false alarms.

Presumably this is one reason why the explicit  Report Abuse link was removed from the bottom menu of every page as it was just too tempting to access for trivial cases.

Yes, you have a point...

The actual report can't be read by outsiders.