Every day, Krystal Clark struggles to breathe.
The 41-year-old incarcerated woman believes mold at Michigan’s only women’s prison is poisoning her body, growing in her lungs, eating through her ears, and slowly destroying her health while prison officials deny her proper care. Her face has become swollen and contorted.
Michigan Department of Corrections officials have repeatedly insisted Clark is receiving proper care. But medical records, court filings, and a federal judge’s order suggest otherwise.
Incarcerated at Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Washtenaw County since 2011, Clark says she’s been battling black mold poisoning for more than a decade while the MDOC ignores her worsening condition and retaliates against her for speaking out.
“The mold is growing out of my body. You can see it,” Clark tells Metro Times during a prison interview. “It’s in my lungs and both of my ears. It’s starting to eat the back of my ears. Every day I’m struggling to breathe and stay strong. It’s really hard.”
Clark’s claims are backed by a federal judge, who ruled this month that conditions at Huron Valley Correctional Facility are dangerous enough to potentially violate the Constitution. In his order, U.S. District Judge Stephen J. Murphy III wrote that the prison is “infested with mold” that eats through bricks and door frames, drips from the ceiling, and falls out of air vents. The judge cited allegations that the mold has caused “respiratory infections, coughing, wheezing, rashes, dizziness, and fatigue,” and said the symptoms were severe enough to meet the legal threshold for cruel and unusual punishment.
The judge highlighted claims that the prison has excessive moisture and lacks proper ventilation, becoming a breeding ground for mold.
Murphy’s ruling stems from a 2019 lawsuit filed against the MDOC by Clark and inmates Paula Bailey and Hope Zentz, who allege the prison is “operating under a state of degradation, filth, and inhumanity, endangering the health and safety of incarcerated women.”
According to the court, prison officials not only knew about the mold but actively tried to cover it up. Guards were instructed to wear masks and gloves, while incarcerated women were denied even basic cleaning supplies and forced to scrub their cells with menstrual pads. In one case, a guard allegedly ordered inmates to scratch mold from shower tiles with their fingernails. Ahead of inspections, officials reportedly painted over the mold in the middle of the night and removed buckets that were catching water leaks to hide the extent of the damage.
“Huron Valley’s own reports detail the crumbling infrastructure: old, rusty, and leaky steam piping and condensate lines; obsolete motor control centers in every housing unit that were damaged from ‘excessive atmospheric moisture over the years due to past steam leaks and poor ventilation;’ and a half-century-old HVAC system that is 25–30 years beyond its peak life expectancy,” the judge wrote.
Murphy concluded that the mold and poor ventilation at Huron Valley were so extreme that they may constitute violations of the inmates’ rights under the Eighth Amendment, which he said includes the right to be free from toxic environmental substances and the right to adequate ventilation of fresh air.
The court order also pointed to a pattern of denial, delay, and superficial fixes that failed to address the root problems. Rather than replacing the 50-year-old HVAC system or fixing leaky roofs, officials relied on last-minute efforts to conceal the issues before outside inspections. Inmates, meanwhile, were left to suffer worsening medical conditions.
“Instead of fixing the conditions, Defendants focused on concealing issues before inspections,” the judge wrote in the order. “They removed around twenty buckets that had been catching water in the law library and shower curtains that had been protecting books ‘so that the inspectors would not examine the problem more closely.’ They painted over mold and corrosion/rust damage in the middle of the night to conceal issues before a morning inspection. And they waited until hours before an inspection to finally replace visibly filthy air filters—two years after the start of this case.”
Clark says she first started experiencing symptoms in 2011, when she was first housed at the prison. She recalls black mold falling from the shower ceiling, and soon she began suffering from hives, nosebleeds, numbness, chronic coughing, and a tightness in her throat that makes it hard to breathe.
“They gave me a mask and said the air and dust weren’t good for me because it was triggering my asthma,” Clark said. “But I knew it was from the mold.”
According to medical records obtained by Metro Times, a prison doctor confirmed the presence of mold in Clark’s ears and lungs during tests conducted on July 17 and July 28, 2023. A laboratory analysis identified the mold as Aspergillus, a common group of fungi that can cause aspergillosis, a life-threatening disease primarily affecting the lungs. It’s especially dangerous in people like Clark who have compromised immune systems or underlying respiratory conditions. An allergy specialist diagnosed her with mold-induced growths in her ears in January 2022, but prison officials have denied her repeated requests to return to the specialist for treatment, records show. Clark also suffers from Wolf-Parkinson-White syndrome, a heart condition that has exacerbated the impact of the mold.
“I’ve been here 15 years suffering,” Clark says. The mold “is all through the unit. What more do you want? It’s in my medical record.”
Medical records show the infection has caused partial facial paralysis and swelling, and Clark says she now struggles to walk, even with a walker. She says she can’t even sleep lying down anymore due to respiratory distress.
Jay Love, a criminal justice advocate who began working with Clark after her health began to deteriorate, says the situation has become life-threatening. She believes Clark, who was sentenced to 17 to 30 years for armed robbery, is innocent.
“She was wrongfully convicted and doesn’t have a death sentence, but the Michigan Department of Corrections has given her one with this mold,” Love said. “She called me the other morning and could barely breathe. She was denied a breathing treatment.”
Clark’s earliest release date is May 2027.
Bailey, another inmate and plaintiff, alleged that black and brown mold formed in the ceiling of the shower and dropped onto her face and body, leaving her with scars from a rash that developed on her face, chest, and legs.
The third plaintiff, Zentz, also said she developed a rash and chronic headaches and dizziness, alleging in the lawsuit that “mold is present in windows, showers, heat registers and vents” and that “patchy black mold drips from the ceiling into the shower onto [her] face and body.” After making “repeated complaints,” Zentz alleged “effective steps were not taken to eradicate the mold.”
Clark and her attorney, David S. Steingold, say the prison has repeatedly blocked her access to proper treatment and retaliated against her for filing grievances. In a letter sent to the prison’s acting warden in February 2020, Steingold warned, “Ms. Clark is in terrible shape, and she expects to die in prison. Her situation is dire. She needs to see specialists outside of the prison immediately.”
A week later, Steingold wrote again to say Clark had been forced to clean mold-filled vents without gloves or a mask and was threatened with punishment if she refused. The following day, he said, Clark was denied medical treatment, berated by a guard, and placed on a 30-day restriction from filing grievances. The punishment was later extended to 90 days.
“It is quite clear that many of the staff at Women’s Huron Valley do not take health care concerns seriously,” Steingold said. “Many of them have expressed the attitude that, as prisoners, they should not expect adequate health care.”
In September 2024, Steingold filed a complaint with the Michigan Attorney General’s Office.
“She is not the same person she was when I first met her,” he wrote. “Her face is contorted with an obvious palsy on the left side of her mouth, and she has obvious growths in her ears that contain mold, as verified by testing at WHV.”
Despite the documented evidence, the state has not taken action. In October 2024, Assistant Attorney General Joshua S. Smith said Clark’s “medical needs and living conditions are being adequately addressed” and added that she is receiving all “medically necessary health care.” He made that conclusion by talking with MDOC officials.
Smith also noted that Clark would need to pay for all medical, transportation, and custody costs in advance to see a specialist outside prison, an expense very few inmates can afford.
“Women make, like, 17 cents an hour — or maybe $15 a month,” Love says. “A lot of them can’t afford to go if they don’t have family supporting them.”
In a June 10 letter to the legislative corrections ombudsman, Love and Trische Duckworth of Survivors Speak accused MDOC of “institutional dishonesty” and pointed to a June 4 medical report diagnosing Clark with aspergillosis and bilateral ear pain. The letter disputes MDOC’s public claims that Clark has no fungal infection and states she was given only ear hygiene instructions and topical creams instead of real treatment.
Clark’s medical and housing grievances span nearly a decade and suggest a clear pattern of neglect. In 2015, she says she was charged $500 for a hospital visit arranged by prison staff. In 2016, she was hospitalized after her asthma flared up and says the prison delayed giving her needed medication. That same year, she warned that black mold was spreading rapidly in the showers and causing rashes and breathing issues. By 2019, she says the problems were never resolved.
“There is black mold in all shower stalls, coming through the blower, which does not help remove steam from the shower area,” Clark wrote in a grievance to MDOC in 2020. “These unsanitary living conditions exacerbate my health issues, which include chronic dry mouth, chronic bronchitis, and moderate persistent asthma. These are extreme health hazards and no one should subject anyone living under these conditions.”
Later that year, she reported feces and urine on restroom walls and floors, complained about being moved to a unit that worsened her symptoms, and said she developed infections in her ears and throat. In 2024, she said mold and dust in the ventilation system continued to cause sinus infections, nosebleeds, and other symptoms, and accused the prison of sandblasting moldy showers to make them appear clean, a process she said only made the spores airborne and sickened at least one MDOC staff member.
To retaliate against her grievances, Clark says, prison staff took away her wheel chair, special creams, soap, deodorant, and even Benadryl. A prison doctor even stopped prescribing her medicine and told her there was nothing wrong with her, Steingold wrote to the MDOC.
Despite all her grievances, Clark says every one of them has been denied or ignored by prison officials.
In response to questions from Metro Times, the MDOC said it cannot comment on individual cases due to privacy laws and pending litigation.
“The Michigan Department of Corrections is committed to the health and safety of those under our supervision and those employed by the department,” the department said in a written statement. “Routine inspections of all MDOC facilities regularly take place. In the event that dangerous or hazardous conditions are found, they are addressed in a timely manner. We take the health care of incarcerated individuals very seriously and provide a consistent community standard of care.”
The agency also reiterated that it offers access to on-site medical staff and outside specialists “when needed,” and prepares incarcerated individuals for reentry through health care and other services.
Clark and her advocates say the reality is far different and that she is being left to die.
“Ms. Clark is near death,” Steingold wrote to the acting warden, Jeremy Howard, “and the neglect of your facility to have her seen by specialists may very well cause the Department of Corrections and you, individually, responsible for her demise.”
Her supporters have called on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to grant Clark medical clemency so she can receive treatment outside of prison. Her application is pending.
“We’re begging the governor to please look over that, to grant her clemency so she can get the proper health care outside of MDOC,” Love said.
Meanwhile, Clark is hoping she can survive long enough to see freedom again.
“I don’t want to die in here,” Clark said, sobbing. “Just look at me. I’m not doing good.”
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This article appears in Jul 9-22, 2025.