In my testing that I did the links did not come out this way:
<p>lorem ipsum dolorem sit amet: <a
href=\"http://www.google.com\">Google</a></p>
When I check the source code of the UE page name WAUE_<page name>_1.php I can see that the slashes are present in the code. Please open this file and find the value in the body of the message and post back with this reference.
I'm thinking that there is some extra formatting occurring in regards to the display of this value, the extra formatting could result in having too many slashes. If you have a hard time identifying this value you can post back with the page in a zip archive so it can be examined, just let us know what recordset and column you are getting the value from.