To be pedantic, child sexual abuse is the vicious crime. Pedophilia per se is, I would say, a part of a person with it. They can't help but get attracted to children. And under no circumstances that can be fulfilled legally, because to do so is committing statutory rape. Children can't consent. This distinction is very important because (a) not all pedophiles sexually assault children and not all child sexual assault perpetrators are pedophiles; and (b) pedophiles who know that acting on it is wrong get little outside help.

contributed to make pedophilia the #1 vicious crime, surpassing rape in most consciences

It is rape. Children are not able to consent.

What makes the rape of a child seen as worse as the rape of an adult, is that children are vulnerable in every sense of the word; physically, emotionally, financially, and sexually.
Everyone has been a child so they are able to empathize, and we are "programmed" to want to protect them.

Edit: I am talking about people who act on their pedophilia by abusing children.

From an objective standpoint, I think the turning point for these opinions was far more recent, and if I had to point to a specific year, I would say 2004 with the debut of Chris Hanson's 'To Catch a Predator' on Dateline NBC.

Prior to this, I don't even remember being exposed to the idea or concept of this. I never heard people talk about it, but in a way this show changed or I guess really even created opinions on this subject.

From a non objectivist perspective, just because I never heard of it prior, it seems to have been an epidemic and maybe I was lucky enough to not have thought about it.

I lost my virginity at 15 to someone many years older than me, but I didn't have a second thought about it, it was like anything else - drinking, smoking, staying out late, this idea that maybe I was too young, but also that everyone else did it, and that's as far as I ever considered it.

I grew up in a different time though, before the Internet, small town, and low income and people I came into contact with didn't even put these things into ideas with words if that makes sense.

I think at best I understood that older men could be untoward with younger folks, but it was treated more as a joke, or something to keep in mind around older relatives and strangers, but not an imminent threat, more like an annoyance to be put up with.

I think it's okay to talk about this, and I'm sorry for your trauma. Protecting children is super important, and so the increased talk of this subject I think helps and protects more, but there is an undeniable generational difference in how people even think about this.

I grew up thinking of this as not even an idea, so I wouldn't have thought about it being worse than anything else. I would have been more scared of drug addicts, and the homeless.

The answer is people like to hate those they don't understand. People hate based on skin color, body fat, sexual orientation, and all sorts of differences. Now it seems like hating those cursed with psychological disorders around sexual attraction and children is in vogue. In twenty years it will be a new group.