Maybe you're getting the ctime by accident? stat works fine for me:

atime:
>perl -le "print(scalar(localtime((stat('somefile'))[8])));"
Mon Sep 27 12:06:06 2004

mtime:
>perl -le "print(scalar(localtime((stat('somefile'))[9])));"
Fri Sep 24 18:39:39 2004

ctime:
>perl -le "print(scalar(localtime((stat('somefile'))[10])));"
Tue Dec 16 17:17:50 2003
[download]

Or maybe you are using stat on link? Compare stat vs lstat.