JDom Tree Creation

[Puzzled Very]

Hi, Im hoping that some one out there will have had experience of creating JDom Documents.
The problem Im having is every tutorial out there is super basic and doesnt cover the problem that im getting. If im creating this tree...
A
-B
--C
---D
Or something simmilar im getting a null element on teh second one in. To add b, you add an element to root. To add c you have to find child of a matching b, then add c to it. Crashes and burns.
On the JDom faq it states something very similar saying namespaces have to be declared. Im not wanting or including any namespace declarations. Can any one help? Thx