Rendering HTML Text from XML Document

I am having trouble rendering text as HTML when brought in through an XML document. The xml node data is set to a string variable and then put in to a text field, on which the ‘Render as HTML’ option is checked. It works fine for all non HTML text so there is no problem with the XML loading, it is purely converting the string to HTML - I have tried unescape as you can see below. Any help greatly appreciated.

In the XML I have the following:

<DescriptionLeft><![CDATA[text here<br>and here<br><br> and here]]></DescriptionLeft>

Then in the AS3 class:

_mcTextFields.leftColumnTxt.text = unescape(Section.DescriptionLeft);

‘Section’ being the parent object which holds the XML data

The text, when traced, is fine and comes through with the <br> tags in place but is not rendered as HTML…

Thanks in advance,
Elliot