Missing encoding in dom4j element/document

I'm using spring-ws 2.1.0.RELEASE, my webservice has @RequestPayload on a dom4j element. It appears that the dom4j element has no encoding set: the method element.getDocument().getXMLEncoding() returns null.

How do I know what encoding was used sending in the request? Is there a way I can force conversion to an encoding such as UTF-8?

The incoming request (I'm using SOAPUI for testing) shows it transfers ContenType: text/xml;charset=UTF-8, but it's not picked up when creating the Element. Isn't this an issue, or should the dom4j Element be changed to a Document? How do I do that, it appears it's not supported (yet).

thanks!
lino