In an interview with ABC-7 Eyewitness News on Thursday, the 60-year-old Desperate Housewives star and Oscar winner reflected on the criminal conspiracy in which dozens of wealthy parents of high school students—including celebrity moms like Huffman and Lori Loughlin—were charged with using bribery, cheating, and other forms of illegal fraud to get their children into elite colleges and universities like Yale, USC, and Georgetown.

The scheme was exposed in part due to the government’s criminal investigation, nicknamed “Operation Varsity Blues.” Huffman spent 11 days in jail in 2019 after paying convicted scandal mastermind William “Rick” Singer $15,000 to have the results of her daughter’s SAT exam altered.

In retrospect, Huffman described what motivated her to conduct the act.

“People assume that I went into this looking for a way to cheat the system and make proverbial criminal deals in back alleys, but that was not the case,” she went on to say. “I worked with Rick Singer, a highly recommended college counselor.” I worked with him for a year and had complete faith in him; he recommended programs and instructors and was the expert. After a year, he began to remark, ‘Your daughter is not going to get into any of the universities that she wants to.’ As a result, I trusted him.”

“When he gradually began 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,” she added. I realize hindsight is 20/20, but I felt like I’d be a poor mother if I didn’t. So that’s what I did.”

“It felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future,” she told me. “And so it was sort of like my daughter’s future, which meant I had to break the law.”

The actress, who claims she didn’t inform her daughter Sophia about her plans, remembered having second thoughts as she drove her to the exam. “She was asking if we could get ice cream afterward.” I’m nervous about the exam. ‘What can we do for fun?’ ” And all I could think was, ‘Turn around; just turn around,'” Huffman told the news site. “To my undying shame, I didn’t.”

Huffman pleaded guilty to bribing a proctor to falsify her daughter Sophia’s test answers. Huffman wrote to a judge during her sentence in September 2019 to argue that she was just thinking about her daughter’s future when she engaged in the plan.

“I keep wondering, ‘Why did I do this?'” Why did I agree to a plot that would see me breach the law and jeopardize my integrity? What internal factors compelled me to do it? In a letter that PEOPLE at the time acquired, she asked, “How could I abandon my own moral compass and common sense?”

In October 2019, she spent 11 days of her 14-day jail term. The actor was also sentenced to 250 hours of community service and a year of supervised release. Huffman will have served her entire sentence by October 2020.

Her spouse, Shameless’ William H. Macy, was not charged in connection with the incident. Sophia retook the SAT and was admitted into Carnegie Mellon University’s theater school, where she is now a student.

Singer, in the meantime, was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for his offenses. In January of this year, he was sentenced to forfeit $10 million.

Singer executed the scam through his two college prep companies, Key Worldwide Foundation and The Edge College & Career Network. He aided clients in obtaining admission to institutions using dishonest methods like paying off test proctors and bribing college administrators and athletic coaches through his businesses, according to a sentencing statement that PEOPLE acquired.

According to the letter, Singer took in more than $25 million from his customers while simultaneously paying bribes of more than $7 million as part of his plan. “We help the wealthiest families in the United States get their kids into school,” Singer boasted in a client conversation captured by the FBI. “They want guarantees; they want this thing done.”

Huffman is speaking up now to bring attention to A New Way of Life, an organization that offers previously jailed women services like housing, job training, and clothes.

“I want to use my experience, what I’ve gone through, and the pain to do something good,” she said of the group where she completed her court-ordered community service, according to ABC-7.