The family of a four-year-old girl mauled by feral dingoes at a Phillip Island wildlife park has been denied any financial compensation from the incident, despite the child having her finger severed and her mother incurring thousands of dollars in medical expenses.

Matilda Arnold, who attended the park last September with her mother Sue and two siblings, was unwittingly feeding dingoes through a fence when one turned vicious, pulling her arm into the cage and attracting other canines who joined in the bloodlust. She was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery to re-attach the finger above the knuckle and to repair badly split webbing. Another finger was also bitten through and the preschooler still suffers regular nightmares.

Single mother Sue and Matilda have now travelled 13 times to Dandenong Hospital from their Phillip Island home for treatment, racking up thousands of dollars in petrol for the 220km round trip and associated medical expenses including a custom-made glove.

But a letter sent by the park’s insurer CGU to the Arnolds’ lawyers, and obtained by Crikey, explicitly rules out any compensation, suggesting instead Matilda was to blame for her own injuries: “Matilda appears to have walked away, crawled through an outer stand-off fence, and then traversed an area between the … fences before putting her hand through the main mesh fence.”

The letter also claims Sue Arnold is guilty for not supervising Matilda, because “common sense would tell anyone that young children should be supervised when they are in and around dingoes”.

The Phillip Island Wildlife Park is not an open range zoo and keeps its dingoes behind a wire fence, which until the incident did not have warning signs or a proper external barrier. On arrival at the park, youngsters are given feed to hand out to animals.

In the days following the attack, with Channel Nine news crews and the Department of Primary Industries hovering, the fence was strengthened and signs advising against feeding the dingoes were belatedly erected.

Arnold says CGU and the park’s operators are “a total disgrace”. She says the external fence “consisted of a few pine polls and a thin string of wire about a foot off the ground … and that was it. Where they [the operators] feed the dingoes there was no wire at all.”

CGU has been deliberately deceptive in their account of the incident, she said: “When Matilda walked over there, I started running. I was probably 50 metres away when I saw her at the fence. And I’ve yelled out to her but it was too late … the dog had hold of her hand. When I got there I was playing tug of war with my daughter and this dog … trying to pull her arm out of the wire.”

And according to Arnold, the park’s owners seemed reluctant to call an ambulance: “I had to ask three times to call an ambulance … and they said to me ‘are you sure you don’t want to just take her to an doctor?’ To me, they are liable for covering the costs of what it’s cost to get her better again.”

The case has been picked up by lawyers Maurice Blackburn, who are waiting while the full extent of Matilda’s long-term injuries become clear. Under Victorian law, a victim must suffer more than 5% damage to their body before a claim for damages and suffering can proceed.

Maurice Blackburn associate Andrew Weinmann slammed CGU for trying to avoid the pay-out: “Matilda was bitten by a dingo at a wildlife park. She has a badly injured finger. It is obvious that a wildlife park should have dangerous animals like dingoes kept securely away from vulnerable children, but the park’s insurer has refused to even pay for Matilda’s medical expenses. At the moment, Matilda is recovering. Once Matilda’s injuries have stabilised she will be able to sue the wildlife park.”

Matilda is facing a further 18 months in and out of hospital and doctors’ surgeries. Money is still owed to Ambulance Victoria and replacement pairs of gloves have to paid out of the Arnolds’ own pocket. And Sue Arnold says the psychological toll could last a lifetime.

“She’s been affected terribly, there’s not a day goes by that she doesn’t talk about death … how many four-year-olds talk about a death every day? She has nightmares about wild dogs and dingoes and she freaks out in front of dogs now,” she said. “She’s going to get attacked again, because of the way she acts around dogs.”

The wildlife park’s owner, Shane Hogan, referred our queries to CGU and said he hadn’t been in touch with them for “a while”. He confirmed the fence had been altered after the incident to “hopefully exclude someone doing the same thing”.

This is not the first time the park has been mired in controversy. Last July, Laeleigh Lee’s four-year-old boy was also left with a hole in his finger after feeding the dingoes. But in the intervening months, it seems little was done to avoid a repeat, despite Lee’s mother despatching an angrily-worded letter to the local newspaper.

A spokesperson for the DPI, who was responsible for regulating the park at the time, confirmed the owners were told to erect a better fence following its initial probe.

In an emailed statement, CGU Insurance told Crikey it had received a claim for interim medical expenses and had requested supporting medical documents, which had not been forwarded, a sequence of events rejected by Maurice Blackburn. The statement appears to contradict the earlier letter sent to Sue Arnold through her lawyers, which says explicitly that the broader claim had been denied.

In the letter, CGU threatens to “join” Sue to the dispute between her daughter and the park’s operators if she proceeds with legal action, claiming she had “apologised” to the park’s owners at the time.

Arnold told Crikey she did apologise, but only for Matilda’s badly-mauled hand that was dripping blood all over the floor.