Story highlights In letters to judge, Sanduskys portray themselves as virtuous victims 
 
 The letters all but guaranteed a maximum punishment, legal observers say 
 
 "Sentencing is a time to ask for mercy, not to attack others," one expert says 
 
 Adopted Sandusky son disappointed by his parents' smearing of his character, lawyers say 
 
 When all was said and done, Jerry and Dottie Sandusky did not ask the judge for mercy. They did not try to extol Jerry's virtues, list good deeds or express regret. Instead, they depicted the boys he sexually assaulted as ungrateful and called them liars. 
 
 They blamed the young men -- including their own adopted son, Matt, who now claims he, too, was molested -- for their downfall. 
 
 In letters to the judge who would sentence the former coach, the Sanduskys portrayed themselves as virtuous victims of a vast conspiracy. They blamed powerful, image-conscious forces at Penn State University, lying cops, ambitious prosecutors and a scandal-hungry news media. 
 
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 The couple's letters were mentioned in court on Tuesday but not read aloud. Judge John Cleland and the Centre County courts made them public, and CNN obtained copies. 
 
 In them, Jerry Sandusky expressed little sympathy for the 10 boys he was convicted of molesting. As he wrote about their families, he tried to shift the blame, pointing out that the boys came from unstable homes. 
 
 "Nobody mentioned the impact of abandonment, neglect, abuse, insecurity and conflicting messages that the biological parents might have had in this," he wrote. He said nothing about the damaged lives and institutions his molestation case left in its wake. 
 
 Read the letters (.PDF) 
 
 Instead, both Sanduskys wrote that the justice system let them down. 
 
 Just as letters to one of the boys he was accused of molesting helped secure his conviction, the letters to the judge all but guaranteed a maximum punishment, legal observers say. 
 
 Cleland, who presided over the trial and sentenced Sandusky on Tuesday to 30 to 60 years in prison, noted that others wrote letters as well. But he indicated that he considered only the Sanduskys' letters in handing down a sentence that, for a 68-year-old man, is likely to be a life prison term. 
 
 Victim to Sandusky: 'Because of you, I trust no one' 
 
 "Sentencing is a time to ask for mercy, not to attack others," said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who teaches legal ethics at Loyola Law School. "In my experience, judges really hate letters that try to shift the blame to others or which belittle the victims or the court." 
 
 B.J. Bernstein, an Atlanta attorney who comments on legal matters for CNN, agreed that Sandusky didn't do himself any favors. 
 
 "The old adage 'if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all' applies to sentencing statements," Bernstein said. "It is awkward when you deny you are culpable and a jury says otherwise. For appellate purposes Sandusky was never going to accept responsibility or admit doing something wrong, but lashing out at everyone so strongly was irrational." 
 
 She added that Sandusky might have thought he was still playing to his Penn State fan base, but it backfired. 
 
 "Between Jerry and Dottie's vicious protestations of innocence," Bernstein said, "all I can think is the victims -- and in particular their son Matt -- should shout back the lyrics from the Eric Clapton song, 'Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself.'" 
 
 Sandusky's son comes forward as victim 
 
 Jerry Sandusky bashed victims and laid out the conspiracy theory in a pre-recorded interview leaked to a campus radio station on the eve of his sentencing. He hinted at it again when he spoke in court on Tuesday, after being warned by his lawyers to avoid criticizing his victims or the justice system. 
 
 His performances on air and in the courtroom were widely derided by prosecutors, legal analysts and commentators as narcissistic, self-absorbed and even more hurtful to the young men he was convicted of molesting. 
 
 Jerry Sandusky's letter expanded on the rambling, 15-minute courtroom soliloquy that touched on everything from the writer Henry David Thoreau to "special inmate friends" to wet kisses from dogs. Like that speech, it was part locker room pep talk and part Sunday school inspirational, with a heaping side order of the Frank Sinatra ballad "My Way." 
 
 He wrote about life in protective custody, and how it led him to think about all the interests that were being protected as the case unfolded: "The system protected the system, the media, the prosecution, the civil attorneys and the accusers. Everybody protected themselves," he wrote. 
 
 "Penn State, with its own system, protected their public image," he continued. "Media protected their jobs and ambitions. Prosecutors protected their jobs and egos. The accusers were protected and provided access to potential financial gain, free attorneys, accolades, psychologists and attention." 
 
 McQueary files lawsuit against Penn State 
 
 He wrote that he was heartbroken. 
 
 "My trust in people, systems and fairness has diminished," he said. "In my heart I know I did not do these disgusting acts. However, I didn't tell the jury. Our son changed our plans when he switched sides." 
 
 Matt Sandusky was 18 when he was adopted by the Sanduskys after spending time with them in foster care. The relationship always has been rocky, but it collapsed near the end of Sandusky's trial in June. As the prosecution's case drew to a close, Matt told investigators that Sandusky had molested him, too. 
 
 Matt Sandusky, now 33, did not testify for either side, but Jerry Sandusky insists that his adopted son's desertion and potentially damaging testimony kept him from testifying in his own defense. 
 
 The Sanduskys spared no one. 
 
 "There were so many people involved in the orchestration of this conviction (media, investigators, prosecutors, "the system," Penn State and the accusers.) It was well done. They won!" Jerry Sandusky wrote, as if a tragic court case about molested children was an epic gridiron contest. 
 
 "When I thought about how it had transpired, I wondered what they had won," he continued. "I thought of the methods, decisions and allegations. I relived the inconsistencies and dishonest testimonies." He pondered what would happen if the tables were turned. 
 
 When the hero falls off the pedestal: The emotion of betrayal 
 
 "What would be the outcome if all the accusers and their families who were investigated?" he wrote. "I knew the answer. All their issues would surface. They would no longer be these poor, innocent people as portrayed." 
 
 Dottie Sandusky also wrote of her disappointment, saying she has lost faith in the police and the legal system. "To think that they can lie and get by with the lies. The press has been unbelievable. People who have not met us are writing untruths." 
 
 Dottie Sandusky's letter is revealing because she has stood silently by her husband in court. She testified at his trial that she never heard or saw anything strange or sexual going on in the basement of their home, where many of the victims say her husband molested them. 
 
 In her letter, she unloaded on her adopted son, Matt. 
 
 "People need to know what kind of person he is," she wrote. "We have forgiven him many times for all he has done to our family, thinking that he was changing his life, but he would always go back to his stealing and lies. He has been diagnose (sic) Bipolar, but he refuses to take his medicine." 
 
 Records from Centre County's probation department and juvenile courts tell part of the story of how Matt H., as he was known, came to the Sanduskys. 
 
 Like the boys who testified against Sandusky at the trial, Matt participated in Sandusky's youth mentoring program, The Second Mile. Jerry Sandusky was in Southern California, preparing for the Rose Bowl, when Matt was arrested in 1995. Sandusky called personally and pulled strings to make sure Matt was placed under his care and not sent to juvenile detention. 
 
 Opinion: For the victims, it's about more than locking him up 
 
 The court documents detail Matt's continuing troubles, including an aspirin overdose in March 1996 that is characterized as a suicide attempt. But he maintained that he wanted to stay in the Sandusky home, writing to the court, "I feel that they have supported me even when I have messed up. They are a loving, caring group of people. They have showed me what a family is really like." 
 
 In another instance, Sandusky called police to his house, claiming a burglar was trying to break in. It was Matt, who said he had come to the house for a power tool. 
 
 Matt Sandusky now is represented by a law firm in State College that is handling the cases of several other Sandusky molestation victims. 
 
 "Matt is extremely disappointed that Dottie and the Sanduskys have decided to smear his character in an attempt to deflect attention from Jerry Sandusky's heinous crimes," his lawyers Justine Andronici and Andrew Shubin said in a written statement to CNN. 
 
 "Matt has shown tremendous courage and strength," the statement continued. "Rather than supporting her son when he made the gut-wrenching decision to come forward and tell the truth about the abuse he suffered at the hands of Jerry Sandusky, Dottie Sandusky has chosen to continue Jerry's strategy of blaming and attacking the victims, thereby perpetuating the abuse." 
 
 Dottie Sandusky wrote that her adopted son "has had many run-ins with the law and stolen money and items from our family. We still love him and want the best for him, but because of his actions we cannot express this to him. ..." 
 
 Karl Rominger, a lawyer for Sandusky, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the State Attorney General's office said prosecutors "stand by" what they said Tuesday about Sandusky's victim and system bashing. 
 
 The lead prosecutor, Joseph McGettigan, described Sandusky's behavior as "banal, self-delusional, completely untethered from reality. It was entirely-self-focused, as if he himself were the victim." 
 
 Jerry Sandusky trial: All you need to know about allegations, how case unfolded ||||| Pennsylvania's public employee pension system said Wednesday it will revoke Jerry Sandusky's $59,000 annual pension in the wake of his conviction and sentence in the child sexual abuse scandal. 
 
 Former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky is driven from the Centre County Courthouse after being sentenced in Bellefonte, Pa., Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012. Sandusky was sentenced... (Associated Press) 
 
 Former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, center, is taken from the Centre County Courthouse by Centre County Sheriff Denny Nau, left, and a deputy, after being sentenced in... (Associated Press) 
 
 The State Employees' Retirement System notified Sandusky by letter that his crimes triggered forfeiture of his pension. The former Penn State assistant football coach was sentenced Tuesday to at least 30 years in prison for molesting 10 boys. 
 
 The retirement system told Sandusky he will no longer receive his $4,908 monthly annuity and informed his wife, Dottie, she is no longer entitled to a survivor's benefit. 
 
 Sandusky's lawyer, Karl Rominger, contended the agency has no legal grounds for revoking the pension and said Sandusky will fight any attempt to do so. 
 
 "It's my inclination to believe that they are just going through the motions to try to throw some red meat to the public, but they know they are going to lose," Rominger said. 
 
 Pennsylvania's pension forfeiture law, originally passed in 1978, primarily applies to public employees convicted of a financial crime related to the office "or when his public employment places him in a position to commit the crime." 
 
 Since 2004, it has also applied to any public school employee convicted of a sex crime against a student. 
 
 In its letter to Sandusky, the retirement system said it had determined that two of the criminal charges of which Sandusky was convicted _ involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and indecent assault _ fell under the forfeiture law. 
 
 It also said Sandusky maintained extensive ties to Penn State after his 1999 retirement, qualifying him as a "de facto" employee subject to forfeiture for crimes committed even when he was no longer on the university's payroll. 
 
 SERS' letter to Sandusky was released to The Associated Press in response to an open-records request. 
 
 Rominger argued in part that since Sandusky wasn't convicted of molesting a Penn State student, the forfeiture law does not apply to him. Sandusky's young victims came to him through The Second Mile, his charity for troubled youth. 
 
 "It did not involve students where he worked, and that's going to be the crux," Rominger said. 
 
 But Philadelphia attorney Alaine Williams, an expert on public employee labor law, said courts have broadly construed the forfeiture law. 
 
 "I think he's got a very serious problem," she said ahead of the retirement system's announcement. 
 
 Sandusky entered the State Employees' Retirement System when he began working as a Penn State football coach in 1969. He collected a $148,000 lump sum payment when he retired from the university in 1999, and began receiving a monthly annuity, according to records provided by SERS. Sandusky received a total of $900,000 in pension payments between 1999 and September 2012. 
 
 The forfeiture statute permits an employee to keep his or her contributions without interest, minus any fees or restitution association with the employee's conviction. Employees subject to forfeiture can appeal to the board of the State Employees' Retirement System, then through the state court system. ||||| Former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky leaves the Centre County Courthouse after being sentenced in Bellefonte, Pa. (Photo: Gene J. Puskar, AP) Story Highlights Unless appeal successful, Sandusky will spend rest of life in prison 
 
 Former coach convicted in June of abusing 10 children over 15 years 
 
 Sandusky delivered a sometimes rambling statement in which he denied his crimes 
 
 BELLEFONTE, Pa. — Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, whose sexual abuse of children triggered a cascading crisis that still shadows the state's largest university, was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison Tuesday. 
 
 The sentence issued by Judge John Cleland means that the 68-year-old former coach, convicted of abusing 10 children over 15 years, will spend the rest of his life in prison barring a successful appeal. 
 
 Sandusky, appearing in court in a bright red jail jumpsuit, delivered a sometimes rambling four-minute statement in which he denied his crimes, saying that he would "fight" to overturn the verdicts against him. 
 
 "They can make me out as a monster, but in my heart I know I didn't do these alleged, disgusting things," Sandusky said before the judge. 
 
 Sandusky was preceded by three of his victims, two of whom spoke through tears, about how he had "betrayed" their trust. One of them, designated by the state grand jury as "Victim 4," looked directly at Sandusky and told him: "You should be ashamed of yourself. I want you to know I will not forgive you. I don't know if I could ever forgive you." 
 
 The short hearing ended with Judge Cleland describing Sandusky's statement as "unbelievable." 
 
 Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky released an audio statement ahead of his sentencing on 45 counts of child sexual abuse saying he is innocent. AP 
 
 Cleland said the "ultimate tragedy of this case is that the very victims you abused had your trust, they trusted you. This crime is not only about crimes of the body, it is also about the assaults on their psyches and their souls." 
 
 Before pronouncing sentence, Cleland acknowledged that he could impose a sentence of "centuries," referring to the maximum punishment of 442 years. But given Sandusky's age, 68, the lesser term still ensured that he would spend the rest of his life in prison. 
 
 Lead prosecutor Joseph McGettigan said the sentence represented "a great service to justice." 
 
 "It ensures that he spends the rest of his natural life in prison," McGettigan said. 
 
 He describes Sandusky's courtroom statement as "delusional, self-reverential and untethered to reality." 
 
 "He displayed the same cowardice as when he preyed on children." 
 
 Karl Rominger, one of Sandusky's attorneys, said the defense team was "pleased" with the sentence because the judge didn't impose a "gratuitous" number of years beyond the lifetime of a 68-year-old man. 
 
 Reaction on the Penn State campus was immediate. 
 
 Penn State President Rodney Erickson released a statement moments after Sandusky's sentencing: "Our thoughts today, as they have been for the last year, go out to the victims of Jerry Sandusky's abuse. While today's sentence cannot erase what has happened, hopefully it will provide comfort to those effected by these horrible events and help them continue down the road to recovery." 
 
 "Most of the community after the trial put that issue to bed," said Scott Kretchmar, who taught sports philosophy at Penn State for 25 years. "Jerry was guilty as charged and he would in all likelihood spend the rest of the his life in jail. Most of us felt that was in the cards," said Kretchmar, who has Penn State's faculty representative to the NCAA from 2000-2010. "That was not news. It's just the aftermath of what was put in place. 
 
 ""I think we're getting pretty close to closure. …. I think we are going to end up moving on and building back up." 
 
 Graduate student John Hanson, 23, of Glen Ellyn, Ill., said he does not think the sentencing will bring much closure to members of the Penn State community, as it will likely reopen many healing wounds. 
 
 "Penn Staters looking for closure should avoid these conversations and instead focus on the fight against child abuse and helping victims heal," Hanson said. "Arguing over how many decades Mr. Sandusky spends in jail is counter-productive to that cause. " 
 
 Sandusky's sentence comes just more than three months after a jury rendered its guilty verdicts and nearly a year after a Pennsylvania grand jury first published a gruesome catalog of crimes directly implicating the once-revered former coach. 
 
 Within days, the fast-moving scandal prompted the ouster of longtime university President Graham Spanier and Joe Paterno, the iconic head football coach who had become university's public face. 
 
 
 
 Two other university officials, Athletic Director Tim Curley and retired Vice President Gary Schultz, also have been charged with failing to report Sandusky's abuse to police and lying to the grand jury about what they were told about the coach's activities involving a 2001 assault of a young boy in a locker-room shower. 
 
 
 
 Both men have denied any wrongdoing and are awaiting trial in January. 
 
 
 
 Sandusky's court appearance marks his first trip outside protective custody at 
 
 the nearby Centre County Correctional Facility where he has been held since shortly after the jury delivered its verdict June 22. 
 
 
 
 He is expected to be transferred to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections admissions center near Harrisburg where he is slated 
 
 to undergo psychological and physical evaluation before a more permanent 
 
 assignment within a state system that holds 51,638 inmates, including 6,777 prisoners classified as sex offenders. 
 
 
 
 Joe Amendola, Sandusky's lead defense lawyer, said his client will launch an appeal. But the attorney suggested that the effort will be difficult. 
 
 "The only way (Sandusky) walks out of jail is if he gets a new trial,'' the attorney said. 
 
 Among the issues Amendola said he will press is a claim that Cleland pushed the case to trial too quickly by declining repeated defense requests for delays, leaving little time to review the mass of evidence assembled against his client. 
 
 "With the number of victims in this case, we had the equivalent of 10 separate cases to prepare for all rolled into the same trial,'' Amendola said. "We had virtually no time to prepare a case. We were forced to piece together a defense by the seat of our pants. That's going to be the issue.'' 
 
 Sandusky's appeal, the pending criminal cases against Curley and Schultz and victims' civil lawsuits lodged against the university ensure that the coach's crimes will continue to shadow the university for months, and perhaps, years to come. 
 
 In July, a blistering internal review of the university's initial response to the first allegations of abuse involving Sandusky triggered NCAA sanctions resulting in $60 million in penalties, scholarship losses and a four-year bowl ban for the school's beloved football program. 
 
 Last week, former Penn State assistant football coach Michael McQueary filed a lawsuit against the university seeking $4 million in lost future wages when his employment was terminated this summer. 
 
 The former coach alleges that the university defamed him and fired him because of his cooperation with law enforcement officials in the Sandusky investigation. 
 
 McQueary, a key witness in the prosecution of Sandusky, testified at trial that he told Paterno, Curley and Schultz about the 2001 shower incident involving Sandusky and a young boy. Paterno, who died in January, was not charged because he reported McQueary's concerns to Curley and Schultz. 
 
 The 2001 incident was never reported to police, resulting only in the admonishment of Sandusky who was directed not to bring children on campus in the future. 
 
 Contributing: Tom O'Toole, Jessica Tully 
 
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– Jerry Sandusky and his wife, Dottie, blamed his victims for his sex abuse conviction in letters written to the judge before his sentencing earlier this week. Instead of expressing regret, the Sanduskys labeled the young men ingrates and liars in the letters, which have now been made public, CNN reports. Sandusky pointed out that the boys came from unstable homes. "Nobody mentioned the impact of abandonment, neglect, abuse, insecurity, and conflicting messages that the biological parents might have had in this," he wrote. The couple, echoing a recording Sandusky made before sentencing, blamed his downfall on a vast conspiracy involving police and the media. In one letter, Dottie describes the couple's adopted son, Matt, who accuses Sandusky of molesting him, as a liar and a thief, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. A spokesman for the state attorney general's office describes Sandusky's behavior as "banal, self-delusional, completely untethered from reality. It was entirely-self-focused, as if he himself were the victim." Sandusky was sentenced to between 30 and 60 years in prison and Pennsylvania's public employee pension system says it is revoking his $59,000 annual pension, the AP reports.