XML find value under specific element

I need a method that has one input argument (aPath) and a boolean return value. I want to check if the input is under "Mandatory" element. For instance: IsMandatory(@"\documents");

this is the xml:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
  <strategy>
  <mandatory&g开发者_开发知识库t;
  <path>\\documents</path>
  <path>\\movies</path>
  <path>\\sounds</path>
  </mandatory>
  <optional>
  <path>\\images</path> 
  </optional>
  <ignored /> 
  </strategy>

Something like:

bool exists = XElement.Parse(xml).Descendants("mandatory")
       .Elements("path").Any(p => p.Value == aPath);

Note that with the content in the origianl question, this will return true for:

string aPath = @"@""\documents\""";

which is to say, a string with the internal value @"\documents\"