Most sources list the death toll at a shade over 3000, and attribute most of those deaths to disease outbreaks, not abuse or murder. Over crowding contributed to the death toll, but so did the fact many of those outbreaks happened in an era before antibiotics were even known or widely available, and because the administrators of the schools were Church officials, with a  vested interest in hiding disease outbreaks to avoid scandal for their private organizations.

Furthermore, 7000 or so settlements have been made for sexual assault victims, not 34 000, and while both the death toll and the sexual assault toll are high, both numbers were reached over nearly 100 years of school operation. 175 000 students went through the system over the years, to put those numbers into perspective. Clearly, most students made it through the schools without dying or being sexually assaulted.