In all the drama surrounding the college admissions scandal, Felicity Huffman has kind of laid low. After pleading guilty in May for her part in the scandal, and being charged with conspiracy to commit mail and honest services fraud, she's been pretty quiet. But now she's waiting to find out if she's going to have to serve prison time. And she's now speaking. In a letter to a judge on the case, she admits her “deep and abiding shame over what I have done.”

PEOPLE was able to obtain a copy of the letter. Based on Huffman's words, she believes her only crime was being a mother who cares. "I know there is no justification for what I have done. Yes, there is a bigger picture, but ultimately it doesn’t matter because I could have said “No” to cheating on the SAT scores,” she writes. Her daughter Sophia suffers learning disabilities, and Huffman's fear was that they'd get in the way of her desire to study acting.

“I worked with Mr. Singer legitimately for a year," she explains, adding that she sought his help with her second daughter Georgia, who also suffers from learning disabilities. "Mr. Singer told me that her [Sophia's] test scores were too low, and if her math SAT scores didn’t rise dramatically, none of the colleges she was interested in would even consider her auditions.”

“I honestly didn’t and don’t care about my daughter going to a prestigious college," Huffman claims. She also says she just wanted to "give her a shot" to get to the point where her acting talent would be the basis for the decision. She feared that her daughter's inability to do math would get in the way of her studying acting.

She then claims to be "shocked" at Singer's suggestion of having a proctor "bump up" her SAT scores. But, she adds that she felt she “would be a bad mother if I didn’t do what Mr. Singer was suggesting.”

“To my utter shame, I finally agreed to cheating on Sophia’s SAT scores, and also considered doing the same thing for Georgia,” she writes. But then the reality of what she had done kept weighing on her. So while it was too late to do anything about Sophia, she then "told Mr. Singer to stop the process for Georgia.” She also notes that the whole situation has caused a lot of pain for her daughter and the family.

According to PEOPLE, the prosecution recommendation to the judge is for Huffman to serve one month in prison, 12 months of supervised release and $20,000 fine. Huffman, through her attorney, is asking the judge for a year of probation and community service. Additionally, she asked 27 people to write letters on her behalf, including former co-star Eva Longoria.

Sentencing is set for September 13th.

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