Rather than working around the problem in Perl, your time would be better spent getting your SQL to return the correct data.

You don't say which database system you are using, but I think you want something like:

select *
from   description_table
where  description_column like '%Robert Jr.%';
[download]

To be honest, I'm surprised that your current SQL even compiles. I assume it's preprocessed in some way before it's sent to the database.

Note: Of course select * is almost always bad practice - you should replace * with the list of columns that you're interested in.