Krystal Clark is counting down to a release date she isn’t sure she’ll live to see.
After 15 years inside Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, Michigan’s only women’s prison, Clark is 11 months away from possible parole. But time no longer feels like something moving her closer to release. It feels like something she is running out of.
In a recent phone call from the prison near Ypsilanti, 42-year-old Clark sounded weak, but urgent. At times, her words tumbled over one another as she described years of pain, sickness and fear.
“I don’t deserve this,” Clark said. “I’ve been asking for help from everybody, every day, since 2011.”
For years, Clark has alleged that black mold at Huron Valley has made her sick. She said she has struggled to breathe and developed rashes, swelling and headaches. She said she has had to use a walker and sometimes has to choose between walking to eat and staying still because of the pain.
She sometimes struggles to hear; she said mold is growing from her ears.
An outside allergy specialist tested her and determined that she was highly allergic to mold, according to Clark, recommending that she not be housed in an environment where it was present.
She said she has repeatedly asked to be sent to a hospital for further evaluation.
The response, Clark says, has too often been disbelief. When The 19th asked about a specific request from Clark regarding outside medical care, Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) spokesperson Jenni Riehle declined to share details about Clark’s case, citing privacy concerns. MDOC has also repeatedly claimed that there are no widespread mold issues at Huron Valley.
Now, after three women incarcerated at Huron Valley died in less than a month, Clark said, fear feels harder to push away. The three deaths of Rebecca Fackler, Ashley Hoath and Khaira Howard have spurred Michigan lawmakers, advocates and families to speak out about healthcare conditions in Huron Valley.
Fackler, 57, died at the prison on May 17 after staff and emergency responders attempted to revive her. Hoath, 36, died June 6 at Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital after being transferred from Huron Valley’s medical unit. Her family and advocates have said she arrived at the hospital in septic shock.
Like Clark, Khaira Howard was close to going home.
Howard was scheduled to be paroled May 27. On May 13, she died at Huron Valley. She had been eligible for parole since March 5 but her release date was moved back.
Howard, too, had raised concerns about mold before her death. State Rep. Laurie Pohutsky said Howard contacted her office earlier this year about conditions inside Huron Valley, including alleged toxic mold. In an interview with The 19th, Howard’s mother said her daughter told her she had been made to clean mold out of vents without gloves or a mask, with debris falling into her hair.
Clark says the mold inside Huron Valley is not a rumor, not a stain and not a problem that can be fixed before visitors arrive. She describes it as something in the showers, around the ceilings, behind paint, inside the air, on her skin and in her lungs.
“The mold grows all around the ceiling, at the bottom of the ceiling, in the showers, everywhere,” Clark said. “When they see people come in, they want us to paint it, try to cover it up, so you won’t see the mold. They want us to paint over it. That’s not our job.”
Mold does not need much to spread: moisture, poor ventilation, old walls, leaking pipes, damp ceiling tiles, air systems that do not pull humidity out of a building. For people with asthma, allergies, chronic lung disease or weakened immune systems, mold exposure can worsen breathing problems, trigger coughing and wheezing, irritate skin and eyes, and lead to more serious complications.
MDOC released a one-page summary of independent mold testing June 12. According to the summary, MoldQuest International conducted assessments at Huron Valley in 2022 and again in spring 2026. The consultant said air samples from both rounds fell within a normal range and did not show “appreciable elevated mold exposure” for people in the facility. Surface testing did find some fungal buildup: Eight of 105 samples taken in 2026 from vent covers in showers, cells and the food service building showed possible or probable mold growth indicators.
The department has cited those results as evidence that Huron Valley does not have widespread toxic mold conditions, which contradicts years of allegations.
Clark is one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against MDOC over alleged mold exposure and poor environmental conditions at Huron Valley. In 2025, after years of legal back and forth, a federal judge allowed key claims to move forward, finding that the women’s allegations were serious enough to support an Eighth Amendment claim.
The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The question is not whether incarceration is supposed to be comfortable. It is whether the state knew people in its custody faced a substantial risk of serious harm and failed to take reasonable action.
“Every day, I have headaches,” Clark said. “I can barely breathe sometimes. I had to sleep sitting up. My body is swelling. It’s so much. It’s just so much.”
Khaira Howard’s mother, Shaquilia DeShields, said her daughter had been diagnosed with schizophrenia before she entered Huron Valley in August 2025. DeShields said that Howard was supposed to be receiving medication and that DeShields contacted the prison repeatedly over eight weeks because she believed her daughter was having a psychiatric break. She said she warned staff after visiting Howard on April 19.
Then access to her daughter narrowed. An in-person visit was canceled. DeShields said she scheduled a video visit for April 30 and waited on the call until the final minute, when Howard was finally brought to the screen.
Howard told her, “Mom, I’m in observation, and I’m ready to get out of there. I feel better,” before the call ended.
Another scheduled video visit passed with no one bringing Howard to the screen and no explanation from the prison.
Days later, DeShields said, prison officials called to tell her Howard, 28, was dead.
“They couldn’t tell me how she died,” DeShields said.
MDOC says that the investigation into Howard’s death is still ongoing.
“Thorough investigations are conducted for all unexpected deaths of incarcerated individuals, and all deaths are referred to the medical examiner who will determine whether an autopsy is warranted, if one has not already been requested by the department,” Riehle said in a statement. “Claims or speculation on the death of any individual within MDOC custody before examinations and investigations are complete can be harmful to loved ones and victims.”
Inside prison, families cannot walk into a medical unit. They cannot demand a second opinion. Their access is filtered through policies, authorization forms and staff discretion.
DeShields said a prison guard told her Howard had complained of severe stomach pain, that her heart rate was 60 beats per minute and that she became unresponsive after rolling on the floor under a bed. But when DeShields began writing down details and asking questions, she said, the staff member clarified that he had not witnessed it and had read the information from a chart.
“He was telling me the story like he was there,” DeShields said. “Then I started asking questions about the story he just told me. He began to fumble.”
DeShields said she is still waiting for autopsy results. What she has now is a timeline with holes, a daughter buried, and no clear explanation of what happened.
“My daughter was safer in the streets than in prison,” DeShields said. “That’s sad.”
Tiffany Walker, family program director for Citizens for Prison Reform, a Michigan-based organization committed to advocating for and elevating the experiences of incarcerated individuals and their loved ones, said families often do not understand the importance of medical authorization forms until an emergency is already underway. Without the proper authorization — which DeShields had — relatives can be shut out of medical information during a hospitalization, mental health crisis or death.
“One of the biggest concerns families raise is how difficult it can be to access timely medical and mental health care information about their loved one during a medical emergency,” Walker said.
Walker said families also report that women’s symptoms are minimized inside the prison.
“One phrase we hear repeatedly is that women are told to ‘drink water’ instead of receiving meaningful evaluation or treatment,” Walker said.
Families are not the only ones trying to force attention on what is happening inside Huron Valley. Advocacy organizations that work with incarcerated women and their loved ones say the complaints have become too consistent, and too serious, to dismiss as isolated.
Trische’ Duckworth, founder and executive director of Survivors Speak, a Washtenaw County-based advocacy organization, said her organization first began raising alarms around Huron Valley after working with Teresa Dunlap, an incarcerated woman with stage four cancer. Duckworth said the organization advocated for Dunlap’s compassionate release, then began hearing from more women and families about conditions inside the prison.
Duckworth met Clark through another woman incarcerated at Huron Valley.
“I started talking to her and she started telling me about her condition,” Duckworth said. “Through that, we became close.”
Duckworth now speaks with Clark multiple times a day and has watched her deteriorate. She said Clark’s condition made it harder to ignore what other women and families had been describing for years. As Survivors Speak advocated for Clark, Duckworth said more people began coming forward with accounts of mold and medical neglect inside Huron Valley.
“There was so much silence around it,” Duckworth said. “Other women started speaking out about either what happened to them while they were in there or family members telling us what was going on with their loved ones inside Huron Valley.”
The complaints are not new. What has changed is the attention on them.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat whose district includes the prison, sent a June 8 letter to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer demanding immediate action after the deaths of Howard, Fackler and Hoath.
Dingell asked the state to release studies, inspections, environmental assessments, and reports related to toxic mold and other health and safety conditions at Huron Valley.
“I’ve visited the facility for hours and spoken directly with women who are terrified for their wellbeing,” Dingell said in her letter. “Their concerns — and the concerns of the broader community — remain unaddressed, and public confidence in the facility has plummeted. These concerns warrant immediate review and meaningful corrective action to ensure that all individuals in state custody are treated humanely and provided with a safe environment.”
Riehle said MDOC has taken “meaningful actions” at Huron Valley in recent weeks, including regular on-site visits from MDOC director Heidi Washington and healthcare leadership, efforts to hire more full-time medical staff and improved communication across the facility. Still, MDOC denies there is an issue with mold.
“Claims suggesting that the facility has dangerous, systemic, black or toxic mold conditions are simply false,” Riehle said.
The state’s own reports show Huron Valley has the kind of building problems that make mold harder to control.
The Michigan Department of Corrections’ 2025 Annual Physical Plant Report for Women’s Huron Valley details aging systems and infrastructure failures throughout the prison. The report calls for better bathroom ventilation in multiple housing units. It notes insufficient airflow from exhaust fans in several units. It calls for replacing 50-year-old rooftop air-conditioning units, updating air handlers, replacing rooftop exhaust fan units, repairing deteriorated and rusted doors, and replacing piping across the facility.
The state has repeatedly described mold remediation and cleaning efforts as evidence that conditions are being addressed.
State Rep. Morgan Foreman, Democrat, said her own visit to Huron Valley made the mold complaints difficult to dismiss. Foreman said she is sensitive to mold and began reacting while inside the prison during a visit last summer.
“I started to welt up, and I take heavy allergy medication and heavy asthma medication,” Foreman said. “One of my other colleagues, who I believe is allergic to mold, she cleared her throat the whole time she was in there.”
The reaction, Foreman said, added to her concern that state officials cannot treat the complaints as isolated or exaggerated, particularly as women inside continue to report breathing problems, rashes and other symptoms they believe are connected to conditions in the facility.
Foreman, one of the 30 lawmakers who signed a letter calling for Washington to resign as MDOC director, said the culture inside the department is bigger than one person, but leadership still matters.
“There has been a dereliction of duty done to the entire MDOC, and especially Women’s Huron Valley,” Foreman said.
Washington was first appointed to lead the MDOC in 2015 under then-Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, and was retained by Whitmer, a Democrat, when her administration took office.
With Whitmer nearing the end of her term and a new governor set to appoint the next MDOC director, Foreman said the state has to confront not only whether Washington should resign, but what kind of department the next director would inherit.
“I do fear about the ‘then what’,” Foreman said. “Because what are we throwing a person into?”
Advocates are no longer only demanding a leadership change. They are pushing for a new oversight structure with enforcement power.
A proposed measure being circulated by Survivors Speak, titled the Krystal Clark Michigan Prison Accountability, Oversight, and Human Rights Act, would require the state to close Women’s Huron Valley within 12 months; provide immediate medical examinations and treatment for women exposed to mold and environmental hazards; and create a private right of action for incarcerated people harmed by unsafe housing, medical neglect or environmental conditions.
It is not yet clear whether the proposal will be introduced by lawmakers. But Clark does not have the luxury of waiting for momentum to be built slowly.
During Clark’s call with The 19th, a recorded voice cut in: one minute remaining. Clark used the final seconds to make her request plain.
“I want the governor to listen to me,” Clark said. “I’m not a threat. Let me go before it’s too late. There’s doctors out there ready to help me. I have 11 months. Let me go get the right help before it’s too late. My kids need me.”
Michigan does not have a death penalty. But at Huron Valley, women, families and advocates who refer to the prison as “the valley of death” are asking whether the state has created something else: a prison where a sentence can become a health crisis.
Before the conversation with Clark ended, she made a direct plea to Whitmer: “You can help save a life,” she said. “Help save my life. Because I know my body ain’t gonna take it.”
