java xml parsing

i'm trying to create an xml file using java but am having a problem with escape character. This is the code below:

//add rule ref
Element ruleref = document.createElement("ruleref");
ruleref.setAttribute("uri", "#_"+MYDATA);
PublicItem.appendChild(ruleref);

//add tag
Element tag = document.createElement("tag");
PublicItem.appendChild(tag);
//delegate the tag "MYDATA" value from the private rule
String tagVal = "<![CDATA[MYDATA = "+ "\"_"+varData+".MYDATA\"; "+
"dm_confirmation_mode=\"never\"; "+
"crResultType=\"rSlot\"; "+
"dm_root=\""+ MYDATA+ "\"" +
"]]>";

The problem is that when the document is created the '<' and '>' characters that exists within the the <tag> element are encoded as < and > and this results in the grammar not being valid.

see output below for the current output:
<tag><![CDATA[ MYDATA = "_111111.MYDATA"; dm_confirmation_mode="never"; rSlot="Speech"; dm_root="MYDATA"]]></tag>

once the document is created i can then import the doc as an input stream and do a string replace to change the characters but this is not very elegant and has a significant overhead as some of the files are quite large.

is there any way i can ensure these characters are not encoded when i first create the document? I am already using the Transformer class before I write to the output file first.