Actress Felicity Huffman is breaking her silence on her involvement in a college admissions scandal which included dozens of parents using bribery and cheating to help get their children into elite institutions.
Huffman served 11 days in jail in 2019 and completed 250 hours of community service after it was discovered that she paid $15,000 to William “Rick” Singer so he would falsify her daughter’s SAT results. The Oscar-nominated actress said she didn’t set out to cheat, but was rather encouraged by Singer, who told her it was the only way for her daughter Sophia to be accepted into a top-tier school.
“People assume that I went into this looking for a way to cheat the system and making proverbial criminal deals in back alleys, but that was not the case,” Huffman said during an interview with ABC-7 Eyewitness News that aired Thursday. “I worked with a highly recommended college counselor named Rick Singer. I worked with him for a year and trusted him implicitly. And he recommended programs and tutors and he was the expert. And after a year, he started to say, ‘Your daughter is not going to get into any of the colleges that she wants to.’ And so, I believed him.”
The “Desperate Housewives” alum said she participated in the crimes for the benefit of her daughter.
“When he slowly started to present the criminal scheme, it seemed like — and I know this seems crazy at the time — that that was my only option to give my daughter a future,” Huffman told the outlet. “I know hindsight is 20/20 but it felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do it. So, I did it.”
“It felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future,” she added. “And so it was sort of like my daughter’s future, which meant I had to break the law.”
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Huffman, 60, maintains that Sophia had no knowledge that her mother was helping her cheat.
“She was going, ‘Can we get ice cream afterwards? I’m scared about the test. What can we do that’s fun?’ And I kept thinking, ‘Turn around, just turn around,'” Huffman said. “To my undying shame, I didn’t.”
Huffman pleaded guilty to paying to have a proctor change her daughter’s answers, ensuring a better score on the SAT. Sophia later took the SAT again and is currently in the theatre program at Carnegie Mellon University, per People.
Singer was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison and fined $10 million for orchestrating the college admissions scheme. A federal investigation dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues” discovered that Singer collected more than $25 million from his wealthy clients and payed out bribes totaling more than $7 million to exam proctors, college administrators, and athletic coaches.
“Full House” actress Lori Loughlin also participated in the scheme, allegedly paying more than $500,000 to have her two daughters accepted into USC as members of the rowing team despite neither of them ever participating in the sport.
