binary xml

One of the methods to encode binary data into an XML document is the
CDATA method, explained on this page:

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1050529.html

However, I notice, that expat returns only the CDATA characters up to,
but not including, the first control character it encounters. This may
be fine according to the XML 1.0 standard, but is there a way around
this, even though we don't follow the standard anymore? I'd like to
get everything between the two CDATA tags. Please, don't suggest the
base64 encoding or some other encoding, it is not possible for me to
use those in my project.