The mother of a Cheshire teenager who was left severely brain damaged by the MMR vaccine has won a compensation award from the government. Robert Fletcher, 18, from Warrington, suffered a fit 10 days after he had the vaccination when he was 13 months old. His mother Jackie received the 90,000 payout from a medical assessment panel last week. The family successfully appealed after their application for compensation was originally turned down in 1997. Robert has frequent epileptic fits, is unable to talk, stand unaided or feed himself, but is not autistic. Mrs Fletcher always believed that her son's epilepsy was triggered by the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Dr Andrew Wakefield was the lead author of the controversial study, published in The Lancet in 1998, which suggested there may be a link between MMR and autism and bowel disease. His comments and the subsequent media furore led to a sharp drop in the number of children vaccinated against these diseases. The study has since been discredited and The Lancet has said it should not have run it. Mrs Fletcher has campaigned for justice for her son for the past 16 years. She said: I feel vindicated by it because over the years I've been labelled anti-vaccine and a scaremonger and all sorts of things, when all I've been trying to do is highlight what's happened to my son, to help safeguard other parents' children."