The Watchtower has attempted to address their two witness rule and the case of the raped woman in a field found at Deuteronomy 22:25-27
All the tireless work that so many ex JWs and concerned worldly people have done by phone calls, cart crashes, demonstrating at assemblies, questioning JWs and so on, is paying off. It's not the doting JWs that have been questioning the two witness rule, it's apostates.
This is a "Question from Reader" in the December, 2019 Watchtower
The Bible says that at least two witnesses are needed to establish a matter. (Num. 35:30; Deut. 17:6; 19:15; Matt. 18:16; 1 Tim. 5:19) But under the Law, if a man raped an engaged girl “in the field” and she screamed, she was innocent of adultery and he was not. Given that others did not witness the rape, why was she innocent while he was guilty?
We all know that these aren't actual questions from readers and the Watchtower phrases these as they wish.
Note the 'but' used. It signifies an acceptance that there appears to be an exception to the two witness rule. This is concreted by the next statement which says specifically "that others did not witness the rape"
There were not two witnesses to the rape which occurred in the field and both the male and female were judged.
The account at Deuteronomy 22:25-27 is not primarily about proving the man’s guilt, because that was acknowledged. This law focused on establishing the woman’s innocence. Note the context.
Is that really the case? The laws establish either the punishment where the male or female were guilty or not and on what basis they would be either guilty or not. Yet the Watchtower manages to turn this fact around and focus on the female.
I wonder why they are doing that? I think it is to divert the readers attention from what is really the issue - that there were not two witnesses.
The preceding verses speak of a man who had sex with an engaged woman “in the city.” In doing that, he was guilty of adultery, since the engaged woman was viewed as married. What about the woman? “She did not scream in the city.” If she had done so, others would certainly have heard her and would have defended her. But she did not scream. Thus, she was sharing in the adultery, so both were judged guilty.—Deut. 22:23, 24.
So immediately the Watchtower has contradicted itself by demonstrating how in this scenario the primary focus of the law was to find someone either guilty or innocent.
The Law next outlined a different situation: “If, however, the man happened to meet the engaged girl in the field and the man overpowered her and lay down with her, the man who lay down with her is to die by himself, and you must do nothing to the girl. The girl has not committed a sin deserving of death. This case is the same as when a man attacks his fellow man and murders him. For he happened to meet her in the field, and the engaged girl screamed, but there was no one to rescue her.”—Deut. 22:25-27.
In that case, the woman was given the benefit of the doubt. In what sense? It was assumed that she “screamed, but there was no one to rescue her.” So she was not committing adultery. The man, however, was guilty of rape and adultery because he “overpowered her and lay down with her,” the engaged woman.
Hence, even though this law focused on the woman’s innocence, the account rightly described the man as guilty of rape and adultery. We can be confident that the judges would “investigate the matter thoroughly” and render a decision in line with the standard that God had set out plainly and repeatedly.—Deut. 13:14; 17:4; Ex. 20:14.
Here again, we see the Watchtower claiming that these versus focus on the woman's innocence but it's not the case.
They state that the Judges thoroughly investigated matters. They would have JWs believe that Elders do so today but they are ill equipped and in no position to be able to do so today. That is why accusations need to be handled by the higher authorities in order to be able to claim that matters have been investigated as thoroughly as they can be.
I find the whole article to be dishonest and contradictory and doesn't address the question asked.
All I can make of it is that they are attempting to leave an impression in the minds of JWs that Deuteronomy 22 has nothing to do with 'two witnesses' and that Elders thoroughly investigate matters regardless.