Case study #2: can this marriage be declared invalid?

There were no obvious problems, and then........

A case study, rendered anonymous: a Catholic lady had an early marriage in the Catholic Church to another Catholic. The husband — a charming man during the courtship, though he did drink too much — soon became abusive and violent after the wedding. After a few years, she grew increasingly fearful that her life was in danger, and her son’s life as well, as the man seemed to resent the child and treated him harshly even though only a toddler. The woman fled the common home, taking with her the only child of the parties. While sheltering from her abusive husband and going through an ugly divorce, she met a nice man who seemed genuinely to care for her and who also got along with her young son. The new man was a generally non-practicing Protestant of some kind. He had never been married before. The woman hoped to marry him in the Catholic Church, but even though now divorced she was still bound by her original matrimonial bond with her first husband in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Appreciating the Protestant man’s good qualities and also wanting to establish a stable home for her son and provide him with a father figure, she and the new man have a festive wedding at a local Episcopalian chapel after a courtship of about a year.