char encoding in DirectAction requests?

Once again I'm struggling with character encoding. My app is supposed  
to encode everything in UTF-8, so I got the following in my code:

In "Application":
- WORequest.setDefaultURLEncoding("UTF-8");
- public void takeValuesFromRequest(WORequest aRequest, WOContext   
aContext) {
         aRequest.setDefaultFormValueEncoding 
( _NSUtilities.UTF8StringEncoding );
         super.takeValuesFromRequest(aRequest, aContext);
     }
- public WOResponse createResponseInContext(WOContext context) {
		WOResponse response = super.createResponseInContext(context);
		response.setContentEncoding( _NSUtilities.UTF8StringEncoding);
		return response;
}
- public void appendToResponse(WOResponse response, WOContext context) {
		super.appendToResponse(response, context);
		if (_NSUtilities.UTF8StringEncoding.equals(response.contentEncoding 
())) {
			response.setHeader("text/html; charset=UTF-8", "Content-Type");
		}
	}

In "Session":
- public void takeValuesFromRequest(WORequest aRequest, WOContext   
aContext) {
         aRequest.setDefaultFormValueEncoding 
( _NSUtilities.UTF8StringEncoding );
         super.takeValuesFromRequest(aRequest, aContext);
     }

Even in the html:
- <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

Still, when I submit the for using a direct action, I'm getting  
crippled data when the user entered non-ascii characters. Needles to  
say that everything works fine (including chinese and japanese  
characters) when the data is submitted using a regular form and a  
component action.

I've searched the web and looked at "Practical WebObjects" chapter 8  
but did not find an answer yet.

-Will