DBI inserting accents

[packetstormer]

Hello Monks

I am having difficulty inserting characters into MySQL with accents e.g "Séan"
I have both the MySQL server/client set to use UTF8 and also the DBI connection has the following:

    my $dbh= DBI->connect("DBI:$db_driver:dbname=$db_name;host=$db_hos
+t;port=$db_port",
       $db_user, $db_passwd,{RaiseError=>1}); #or die $DBI::errstr;
       $dbh->{'mysql_enable_utf8'}=1;
       $dbh->do("set NAMES 'utf8'");

I have also tried decoding the string before the insert like: $case_header = Encode::decode_utf8($case_header); But that inserts a very strange character in the DB.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
BTW, if I connect to MySQL CLI and run a manual insert the string "Séan" inserts and displays fine.