Convicted child abuser Jerry Sandusky loses $59,000 annual pension

Jerry Sandusky (C) leaves the Centre County Courthouse after his sentencing in his child sex abuse case in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania October 9, 2012.

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, just sentenced to what amounts to life imprisonment in a child sex abuse scandal, has now lost his state pension, worth nearly $59,000 per year, a state document revealed on Wednesday.

The decision by the State Employees Retirement System to revoke his $4,908 monthly pension was unveiled in a letter to Sandusky, 68, dated October 9, the same day he was sentenced in Pennsylvania Common Pleas Court to prison for 30 to 60 years for molesting children.

The move by SERS, a state retirement plan for public employees, means Sandusky loses his entire pension, including a sum to his wife Dottie when he dies, according to the letter first published by the Centre Daily Times of State College, Pennsylvania, where Penn State, a public university, is located.

Sandusky began working for Penn State's football program under the late and legendary coach Joe Paterno in 1969.

Sandusky is credited with creating, during the 1980s and '90s, the fearsome defensive squads that earned the school its reputation as Linebacker U.

But his reputation crumbled when the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office released a grand jury report in November 2011 that resulted in criminal charges against him for sexually abusing 10 boys over 15 years.

Sandusky was convicted in June on 45 counts of sex abuse, and sentenced on Tuesday to spend, in all likelihood, the rest of his life behind bars.

As the scandal unfolded in November 2011, Paterno and university president Graham Spanier were fired. Paterno, 85, died in January of lung cancer.

Penn State pension payments to Paterno's widow, Sue, are calculated to top $13 million.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Todd Eastham)