Can my girlfriend receive an annulment without the church needing to contact her “Ex-Husband”?
So my girlfriend is planning on converting to Catholicism so we can be married in the church. We live in the southern United States.
She was married once before for only three weeks. She civilly married her long time boyfriend in Egypt (he’s Egyptian, she’s Russian). She was agnostic, and he is an a-religious Muslim. She was attempting to salvage the relationship and at the time naively thought marriage would solve their problems. She realized very quickly that she made a mistake and was able to get him to agree to the divorce and moved back home to Russia. As I said but I will reiterate, they were only married for 3 weeks. She has all the documents including their marriage certificate and divorce papers. The relationship was emotionally abusive and he made many physical threats against her.
Recently, I broached the subject of the necessity of receiving an annulment for her previous marriage so we can marry in the Catholic Church, she was extremely nervous. To this day, she is genuinely afraid of him. She fears him both for her physically safety, and his capacity to find ways to harass her all the way from Egypt. What makes her nervous is the fact that to my understanding, the church (during the annulment proceedings) will attempt to reach out to her Ex. She is genuinely terrified of this and of any retaliation and/or reprisal against her because of this. Evidently he is an extremely jealous and petty person. I have assured her and am confident that he will be unable to do anything meaningful against her, but she remains adamant in her fear. This issue is becoming a serious obstacle for her mentally.
Our question is thus: Can the annulment proceed/be approved without the necessity to contact her “ex husband”? Especially considering her unique circumstances?