By Karen Ocamb

Events producer Brian Quintana stood victorious outside the courtroom where, on Feb. 7, a judge granted him a restraining order against socialite Paris Hilton, whom he claimed had threatened, harassed and assaulted him.

"I'm going to sleep better at night knowing that she or her henchmen can't come after me," Quintana said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

According to interviews, Quintana said he was hired by Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos to introduce him to young women and the Hollywood social scene. Hilton subsequently accused Quintana of interfering in her relationship with Niarchos and threatened him over a tabloid rumor. Quintana called Hilton "a physical and abusive person."

Hilton's attorney called Quintana "an annoying individual," and said he refused Hilton's pre-hearing offer to stay away.

This is Quintana's second restraining order against a female celebrity. In 1995, Quintana obtained a temporary restraining order against Hart to Hart star Stephanie Powers, his boss at a wildlife foundation, claiming Powers sexually forced herself on him, after which he received threatening phone calls.

In a statement to the court on June 2, 1995, Lee Condon reported in a July 7, 1998, expose of Quintana in The Advocate, Powers denied all allegations and said of Quintana: "We may bring our own claims against him for the damage we believe he caused our fund-raising effort by ... forging the signature of an executive of one of the Walt Disney companies on a letter pledging a $15,000 'sponsorship' of the event." The judge lifted the restraining order.

In "Using Pedro," Condon, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Daily News, investigated Quintana's controversial association with the Pedro Zamora Foundation, a West Hollywood-based AIDS organization. Zamora's family, his lover, and close friends came to believe Quintana, who was running the foundation, was "using Zamora" for his own benefit.

Quintana told Condon, "This is not about any one individual or any one person involved. This is about making a difference."

But Quintana's arrest on three charges of sexual assault and assault with a deadly weapon didn't help. The arrests, Condon reported, "stemmed from an October 1996 encounter with another gay man on the porch of a private residence near the leather bar Cuffs in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles. Soon after he met Quintana on the street, the alleged victim said in court testimony, the two of them started engaging in sex on the porch. The alleged victim charged that when he decided to cut the sex short, Quintana twice shoved his fingers up his anus. 'I did not want something like that to happen,' the alleged victim testified in court last January. 'I know that when I pulled away, I pulled away. That's when he placed his hand inside me.' When the alleged victim tried to leave the scene, he said, Quintana threatened to hit him with a brick. Quintana pleaded innocent to the charges."

The judge dismissed the sexual assault charges but found Quintana guilty of using the brick against the alleged victim. Quintana served minimal time under house arrest.