Fuller House star Lori Loughlin was released from prison Monday following a two-month stint for a college admissions scandal she perpetuated with her husband, designer Mossimo Giannulli. The couple paid William “Rick” Singer $500,000 to help get their two daughters admitted to The University of Southern California. The parents pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges earlier this year.
America’s “Aunt Becky” began serving her sentence on October 30 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California. Her husband is now serving his sentence of five months at the Federal Correctional Complex Lompoc.
Their daughter, Olivia Jade Giannulli, appeared on Red Table Talk to share her experiences for the first time.
“It’s been hard. For anybody, no matter what the situation, is you don’t want to see your parents go to prison, but also, I think it’s necessary for us to move on and move forward,” she said. “What happened was wrong and I think every single person in my family can look at it and be like, ‘That was messed up, that was a big mistake.'”
She added, “But I think what’s so important to me is to learn from the mistake. Not to be shamed and punished and never given a second chance… I’m 21. I feel like I deserve a second chance to redeem myself to show I’ve grown.”
The young woman added that she “wasn’t fully aware of what was going on.”
“When it first happened I didn’t look at it and say, ‘Oh my God like how dare we do this?’ I was like, ‘Why is everybody complaining? I was confused what we did.’ That’s embarrassing to admit,” she said, adding that she was a good high school student, but didn’t deserve to be at USC.
“I wasn’t slacking in high school,” she said. “I don’t want to discredit myself to the point where I was like, I have all this and I also didn’t care. I really did care. I was also a very involved student. I think I put a lot of trust into a person that claimed their profession was college counseling and it led me in a wrong direction. It’s not to shift blame; it’s just to explain that I wasn’t aware of what was going on.”