Preserve Backslashes? HTML_Template_IT

[CuppoJava]

Hi,
I'm using HTML_Template_IT package in my program, and I need for the package to preserve my strings with the backslashes.
ie. don't treat them as escape characters.

in the example below
$user->getFirstName() returns "\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"

but the template only displays "\\\\\\\\"


$opt = array('preserve_data' => true, 'use_preg'=>false);
$template = new HTML_Template_IT("./templates", $opt);
$template->loadTemplatefile("ProfilePanel.tpl", true, false);

$template->setCurrentBlock("MAIN");
$template->setVariable("FIRSTNAME", $user->getFirstName());

I thought preserve_data would have worked. But it didn't and now I'm quite stuck. Thanks a lot for your help.
-Cuppo