Apache Velocity Escape characters

[Niall Loughnane]

Hi,

I know that is not the right forum but PLEASE help,

I am creating a velocity template and the velocity template object is being escaped,

what i am trying to do is use the following template:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<page>
   $person.getUrl()
</page>

this calls the method getUrl() on the person class but the url that is being returned is being escaped,

urls are being converted from:
"< a href='http://www.john.com' rel="nofollow" >www.john.com< / a >"
to
& quot ; & lt ; a href= & quot;http://www.john.com//& quot;& gt;http://www.john.com& lt;/a& gt;& quot;


i think this is being done in:
* class: org.apache.velocity.runtime.parser.node
* method: render(InternalContextAdapter context, Writer writer)

any advice would be amazing,

Thanks in Advance,

Niall