AUSTIN — Been convicted of a felony? Until this week, the Texas Youth Commission might have had a job for you.

The agency has allowed felons — possibly including murderers — to work with troubled juveniles as long as one of the agency's two top officials authorized it.

And those hired under the agency's 51/2-year-old policy could easily keep their backgrounds secret from the juveniles they supervised or the folks they worked with: State law requires any new TYC employee's criminal record be destroyed.

"I am past stunned," said Jay Kimbrough, the special master appointed last week to oversee the investigation of the agency's sex abuse scandal. "I don't have sufficient vocabulary to describe this. ... Goodness knows where this came from."

Kimbrough offered the public this assurance: As of this week, felons would no longer be granted the "specific authorization" needed for a TYC job.

"That's not happening," Kimbrough said, adding that the three-page Personnel Policy and Procedure Manual could not be summarily changed.

Meanwhile:

Evidence tampering charges were filed Friday against Sylvia Machado, the superintendent of Ayres House, a TYC halfway house on Culebra Road in San Antonio. Her bond was set at $20,000. Authorities arrested her Thursday for apparently shredding TYC documents, but investigators could not say what evidence she may have destroyed. Machado could not be reached for comment.

The top TYC investigator was suspended in Austin with pay for allegedly tampering with internal documents related to the sexual abuse investigation at the West Texas State School. Ray Worsham has been accused of redacting incriminating information from documents detailing who knew what when.

The attorney general's office announced Friday that a grand jury will finally hear evidence on the two-year-old sex abuse case in which a pair of male administrators allegedly abused scores of boys at the West Texas juvenile detention center. A panel will convene in Pecos the week of March 19, six weeks earlier than first scheduled.

That announcement was made a day after lawmakers berated an official with the Texas Attorney General's Office for failing to act promptly and decisively in the case.

An e-mail obtained Friday by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News shows that in February 2006, the attorney general's office received a detailed report from the Texas Rangers about the sex allegations at the West Texas school, but rebuffed the investigating officer's request for help.

A staff attorney wrote the Ranger, Brian Burzynski, a curt reply, saying the attorney general's office had concurrent jurisdiction (with local district attorneys) only in election cases. Burzynski had asked for the help after the Ward County district attorney let the case languish. A spokesman for the AG's office said Burzynski's appeal for help never made it up the chain of command.

Burzynski had earlier been rebuffed by federal authorities as well.

In July 2005, an assistant U.S. attorney wrote Burzynski that his office could not help with a felony prosecution unless it could demonstrate that the victims sustained bodily injury. None had.

Burzynski's investigation found the two administrators used their authority to molest some 10 juveniles for a year or more despite superiors at the school and at TYC headquarters in Austin being alerted to the men's suspicious behavior.

Both administrators resigned during the investigation rather than face termination. One landed a job at a charter school. The other was working last week as a front desk manager for an upscale Austin hotel.

TYC officials have granted 210 hiring "exceptions" since May 2006, when it began keeping track of the number of candidates who otherwise would have been disqualified because of a criminal past, or a poor driving record that would prevent them from landing a job as a bus driver, according to an agency spokesman.

The agency could not detail how many exceptions were for felons, since criminal records are expunged after a job offer is made. But TYC spokesman Jim Hurley said the agency was "starting over and rechecking everybody," and should know by next week who exactly was working among the state's most troubled youth.

The hiring policy was adopted in November 2001 and approved again last May. Among the approvers were the agency's former executive director, the former deputy executive director and the current general counsel.