diff --git a/src/pl/plperl/plperl.c b/src/pl/plperl/plperl.c
index 5595baa..8a9d677 100644
--- a/src/pl/plperl/plperl.c
+++ b/src/pl/plperl/plperl.c
@@ -254,7 +254,31 @@ sv2text_mbverified(SV *sv)
 	 * length, whatever uses the "verified" value might get something quite
 	 * weird.
 	 */
-	val = SvPV(sv, len);
+
+	/*
+	 * When we are in an UTF8 encoding we want to make sure we get back a utf8
+	 * byte sequence instead of whatever perls internal format happens to be.
+	 *
+	 * Non UTF8 will just treat everything as bytes/latin1 that is
+	 * SvPVutf8(chr(170)) len == 2
+	 * SvPVbyte(chr(170)) len == 1
+	 * SvPV(chr(170))) len == 1 || 2
+	 */
+	if (GetDatabaseEncoding() == PG_UTF8)
+		val = SvPVutf8(sv, len);
+	else
+	{
+		/*
+		 * See if we can safely represent our string as bytes if not bail out
+		 * otherwise perl dies with "Wide Character" and takes the backend down
+		 * with it
+		 */
+		if (sv_utf8_downgrade(sv, true))
+			val = SvPVbyte(sv, len);
+		else
+			elog(ERROR, "invalid byte sequence");
+	}
+
 	pg_verifymbstr(val, len, false);
 	return val;
 }