Safe parsing of innerData in Haxe.xml.Fast with empty content

I'm having a hard time, reading innerData, when parsing an xml in haxe, using haxe.xml.Fast.

I'm trying to use these utility functions in a custom Class named XMLUtil

public static function getNodeNamed(parent:Fast, nodeName:String):Fast {
    if ( parent.hasNode.resolve(nodeName)) {
        return parent.node.resolve(nodeName);
    }else {
        return null;
    }
}

public static function getNodeText(parent:Fast, nodeName:String):String {
    var node : Fast = getNodeNamed(parent, nodeName);

    try {
        return node.innerData.toString(); // Still crashing here, although it's in a try-catch block
    }catch (err:Error) {
        return "";
    }
    return null;
}

When I'm parsing a node that don't necessarily have inner data (see 'triggers' node)

<dialog id="tut4_2" repeat="2">
        <text>Blah blah blah</text>
        <triggers></triggers>
        <triggered>tut4_1</triggered>       
    </dialog>

I'm getting a crash when accessing the node's innerData

var triggers:String = XMLUtil.getNodeText(newDialog, "triggers");

Here's the runtime error

[Fault] exception, information=triggers does not have data
Fault, get_innerData() at Fast.hx:140

The weirdest thing that I really don't get, is that i'm calling the innerData in a try-catch block, but I'm still having my function crashing.

Why is this happening, and how can I access the innerData in a safe and convenient way?

I'm using Haxe 3.1.3 and NME 3.0

P.S I know that Fast is meant to be used with a stricter XML structure, but I'm porting a large XML files collection from an as3 project, and I don't want to change the XML content. I just want to deal with it programmatically.