use Encode qw(encode);
...
#my $thearesp = $theresponse->content;
my $thearesp = encode("iso-8859-1", decode("UCS-2LE", $theresponse->content));

##</code><code>##

open FILETEMP, "+>" . "$tempIndex.htm"

##</code><code>##

open FILETEMP, "+>" , "$tempIndex.htm"