escaped quotes and backslashes in passwords

Hi, Thanks for reading this and if I am not clear in my thoughts please let me know. FreeRADIUS Version 2.2.5 (deb8 repos) I am using a perl module in authenticate{} to call an external api to validate the passwords received from Radius Proxy (Radius Proxy receives a password from openvpn radius plugin) The quotes and backslashes in the passwords I receive to the radius perl module, inside $RAD_REQUEST{'User-Password'} always end up escaped with backslashes. I was wondering what causes this behaviour and how can it be avoided without resorting to using perl regexps to remove the backslashes from the $RAD_REQUEST{'User-Password'} values? Thanks!