Since you are new to Perl, and therefore have no allegiance to any particular XML parser module, I strongly recommend trying XML::Twig. Like you, I have tried using XML::Parser, but I also had "a really tough time with the correct syntax". Then I discovered XML::Twig.

If you update your original post with a small sample of your actual XML file, rather than the hard-to-read Dumper output, I will (try) to give you a simple Perl code sample to parse what you want. Enclose the XML in "code" tags, according to Writeup Formatting Tips