escaped quotes and backslashes in passwords

[John Smith]

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!