A cleaner sent lewd and insulting text messages to female real estate agents whose numbers he took from the property section of newspapers.

Between 2010 and last year, Sim Eng Peng, 41, sent the messages from his mobile phones to insult the modesty of 11 victims.

He committed the offences in the last six of the 40 charges against three women while on bail for similar offences. The victims were aged 23 to 47.

Yesterday, Sim, now unemployed, was jailed for six weeks on each of the six charges that were proceeded with. The rest were taken into consideration.

District Judge Christopher Goh ordered that three of the sentences run consecutively, which means a total effective sentence of 18 weeks. He took into account Sim's mild intellectual disability and low IQ.

"I also have to note that he actually took care to change his SIM card to avoid detection. He has an antecedent, exactly the same, and that occurred a year before he committed this offence," the judge said.

The court heard that one of the victims in the proceeded charges, a 47-year-old real estate agent, reported to the police in April 2011 that she had been receiving SMSes from an unknown sender who introduced himself as Alan and gave his home address.

"SMSes are telling me to provide some sex services to him..." she said. She also gave the three numbers used to send the messages.

Sim, who said through his lawyer that he regretted the offence, could have been jailed for up to one year and/or fined on each charge of insulting modesty.

ELENA CHONG