Verb misuse question
English has the concepts of verbs having active or passive voice.
In the active voice, the grammatical subject (nominative noun) is the 'actor' or 'doer', and the grammatical object (accusative noun) is the 'patient' or the one that the action operates on.
For example, in "Bruce kicked the bull", Bruce does the kicking and the bull is subjected to the kicking.
In the passive voice, the nominative is the patient and and the accusative is the actor.
For example, in "Bruce was kicked by the bull", Bruce is now subjected to the kicking, and the bull is the one that does the kicking.
Some languages have the concept of 'middle voice'. I don't recall this being highlighted during my school days, but it helps to explain the problem you bring up.
When a verb is in the 'middle voice', the nominative is in some sense both actor and patient.
For example, in "Bruce feared the bull", Bruce is the one who is doing the fearing, but you could also say that the one who becomes afraid (the 'patient' of the fearing) is also Bruce.
The obvious objection is to argue that "fear" is in the active voice because, following the above constructions, we can say that the bull was feared. Nevertheless, with kicking, the kicker is not intrinsically equated with the one being kicked. On the other hand, when one 'does' some fearing (so to speak), the one who got frightened is the same person - the object of the fear isn't the one said to be frightened.
Fear and worry are both 'middle voice' verbs in this sense. The one who fears or worries is the one who is afraid or worried. The actor-patient link is so deep with these words that saying "she feared him ..." doesn't carry the sense that she made him afraid. When someone tries to wrench fear, worry or any other 'middle voice' verb into the active (or passive) voice as your example tries to do, the resulting sentence sounds awkward.
This isn't the case with the word "scared". If Bruce scared the bull, Bruce is the one doing the scaring, and the one ending up scared is the bull (not Bruce). Even "Bruce is scared" doesn't necessarily equate actor and patient - Bruce might be the patient, but he doesn't have to be the 'actor' doing the scaring (the bull might be the one scaring Bruce). So since scare is an active/passive voice verb and not a 'middle voice' verb, it can properly replace "fear" and "worry" (grammatically) in your examples.